156 Nature-based solutions in the German Alps to mitigate hydro-meteorological risks

Nature-based solutions (NBS) are increasingly recognized as robust, sustainable and cost-effective measures for reducing the risk of extreme weather events. Their widespread implementation has become an important goal of the European Union’s political agenda. Many types of measures are included under the umbrella term of NBS. As their number is increasing, knowledge transfer should support effective implementation. Efforts have been made by a number of EU funded projects to develop and assess NBS implementation and enhance the transfer of experience. European databases as OPPLA has been created for this purpose. Interestingly, while mountain areas are highly vulnerable and already have experienced numerous extreme hydro-meteorological events and related natural hazards, NBS implementation in mountain area have received very little attention in both the research and practices until recently. The EU funded project PHUSICOS intends to partly fill this research gap by contributing in the knowledge transfer effort in making an inventory of NBS at their case study sites located in mountain areas. Given this background, the goal of our study is to provide a detailed overview of the NBS implementation effort for the case of German Alps. In this contribution, we present a systematic survey performed in the German Alps. We found 156 solutions implemented. Descriptive and qualitative analyses provided an overview of the implementation efforts in the German Alpine areas. Most of the measures were located within river systems and targeted flood protection. Few measures were implemented in the upper catchment to retain water on the land. Furthermore, few solutions exist to mitigate soil erosion and landslide. Further analysis concentrated on the stakeholders driving the NBS implementation. This survey may help, in the future to develop practical guidelines, identify governance enablers, ease cross-fertilization and identify successfully strategies.