Participatory resilience monitoring to guide nature-based solutions in sloping environments under climate change

Mountainous regions inhabited by Indigenous communities are increasingly exposed to coupled geomorphic and hydrological disturbances under climate change, including intensified rainfall, altered sediment dynamics, and shifting hydrological regimes. Nature-based Solutions (NbS) are widely promoted as adaptive responses in such settings; however, their implementation in complex sloping environments often lacks clear operationalization, particularly under conditions of climatic uncertainty and hydrological non-stationarity.

Here, the gap is addressed by introducing Participatory Resilience Monitoring (PRM), a framework that integrates community-based knowledge with scientific environmental monitoring to support the design, evaluation, and adaptive management of NbS in sloping environments. The core challenge for NbS in such contexts lies not in their conceptual validity, but in the absence of mechanisms linking place-based knowledge, monitoring indicators, and decision-making processes over time.

This study combines ecosystem services assessments, interviews with Indigenous and local stakeholders, and field surveys in the Maolin District, Taiwan. The analysis identifies community priorities, culturally valued landscapes, and zones of geomorphic sensitivity. Riparian corridors, slope–valley ecotones, and habitat-supporting areas emerge as key locations where potential NbS interventions and resilience monitoring overlap. These areas represent both high environmental sensitivity and strong social relevance. PRM integrates three interconnected pillars: (1) place-based knowledge, (2) resilience indicators and monitoring, and (3) adaptive decision-making and learning. Environmental data analysis and modeling provide decision support within PRM while maintaining participatory processes at the core. By operationalizing NbS through participatory monitoring, PRM enables interventions to be context-specific, testable, and adaptable under ongoing climate change, offering a transferable framework for NbS implementation in mountainous regions characterized by social-ecological dynamics.