Nature-based solutions (NBS) positively impact ecological landscape quality (ELQ) by providing multiple benefits, including enhancing natural capital, promoting biodiversity, mitigating water runoff, increasing water retention, and contributing to climate change adaptations and carbon sequestration. To analyze the specific contribution of different NBS types, this study assessed 14 ELQ indicators based on the application of spatial data. Five NBS based on existing elements of green and blue infrastructure (GBI) were analyzed at the city level (Lublin, Poland), including parks (UPs), forests (UFs), water bodies (UWs), allotment gardens (AGs), and woods (Ws). The analysis revealed that different NBS contribute in contrasting ways to the improvement of various dimensions of ELQ. UFs made the biggest contribution to the maintenance of ecological processes and stability, as well as to aesthetic values. Ws together with AGs were crucial to maintaining a high level of diversity at the landscape scale and also contributed to preserving the ecological structure. UWs and UPs had no outstanding impact on ELQ, mainly due to their high level of anthropogenic transformation. The application of spatial indicators proved useful in providing approximate information on the ecological values of different types of NBS when other data types were either unavailable or were only available at a high cost and with considerable time and effort.

The nature-based solutions (NBS) concept is an umbrella term that connects and organizes previous concepts from the ’green-concept family’. Therefore, interventions similar to NBS were used for a long time before this term was first introduced. Such pre-existing actions, to be considered as NBS, must meet the Global Standards formulated by the Union for Conservation of Nature Global Standards. One of these standards refers to the challenge-orientation of NBS. The aim of this study was to propose objective criteria that enable the assessment of the challenge-orientation of such interventions. To this end, a set of criteria referring to the seven societal challenges was presented. A Lublin city (Poland) case study was applied in relation to 24 types of interventions. The results showed that all of the analysed pre-existing actions met at least two of the challenges. The actions with the greatest challenge-orientation potential continuity for ecological networks are: protecting surface wetlands, public parks, allotment gardens, restoring waterbodies and maintaining floodplains, and the lowest potential are: creating nesting boxes for bats and insect hotels, installing apiaries and below-ground rainwater collection systems. The analysed interventions responded, to a greater extent, to challenges such as to human health, climate change adaptation and mitigation and ecosystem degradation/biodiversity loss, and, to the least extent, to food security and socioeconomic development Moreover, the study revealed that the scale of the pre-existing intervention type is too general to draw conclusions regarding its challenge-orientation: each piece of the intervention should be assessed separately in relation to the conditions in the local context.

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