A nature-based approach to mitigate flood risk and improve ecosystem services in Shiga, Japan

This study employs nine scenario analysis to examine the effectiveness of NbS for the mitigation of flood risk and their implications on the provision of ecosystem services in Shiga, Japan. The scenarios are developed under the current and future land demand and flood policies. The NbS interventions implemented in land use planning are mostly expected to utilise forest, agricultural land, or wetlands and four ecosystem regulating services are selected for this analysis: carbon storage; water yield; nutrient delivery ratio; sediment delivery ratio. The scenario analysis revealed that current land use and building regulations could mitigate the flood risk through the relocation of residential land from flood-prone areas to safer areas as well as by converting residential land to forests and paddy fields.