1 INTRODUCTION

‘In short—our world needs climate action on all fronts—everything, everywhere, all at once’ António Guterres, United Nations Secretary-General (Guterrez, 2023).

Solutions to slow down, stop and ultimately reverse climate change—together with solutions that address unsustainable use of land and water bodies—are urgently needed at local and global scales to enable people and nature to thrive on a changing planet (Diaz et al., 2015; IPBES, 2019). Acceleration of climate action is required to meet the ambitions of the Paris agreement (United Nations, 2015), and biodiversity protection and restoration are needed to meet the commitments of the Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (Convention on Biological Diversity, 2022). However, the climate and biodiversity crises are intimately linked and cannot be tackled in isolation (InterAcademy Partnership, 2021; Pörtner et al., 2021). Integrated solutions to the climate and biodiversity crises (Gorman et al., 2023), together with other global sustainability challenges, include the identification, design and implementation of nature-based solutions (NbS).

‘Nature-based solution’ is an umbrella term which includes many existing applications of ecology (Cohen-Shacham et al., 2016; Seddon et al., 2020). All definitions of NbS include the concept of actions in natural and managed ecosystems to provide solutions to global challenges like climate change, while benefitting people and protecting and restoring biodiversity. NbS are fundamentally about how people interact with biodiversity, both as ecosystem managers and beneficiaries of the ecosystem services provided (Figure 1). People are central to the NbS concept, as both stewards and beneficiaries (Standish & Parkhurst, 2024). However, as the primary producers in ecosystems and the dominant life form on earth (Bar-On et al., 2018), plants lie at the heart of NbS, and plant ecology, by extension, lies at the heart of understanding how and why NbS work.

Plants provide solutions to both climate change mitigation and adaptation; they regulate biogeochemical cycles, greenhouse gas (GHG) fluxes and the Earth system, and mediate the effects of climate on the functioning and resilience of ecosystems. There is a long history of the application of plant ecology to various domains relevant to NbS including ecosystem-based approaches, agroecology, forestry, restoration, conservation and population ecology for pest control. Plant ecology can provide the foundation for developing and evaluating NbS based on an understanding of the ecological processes that underlie ecosystem service flow to people. What distinguishes NbS from more general applications of ecology is that NbS address a societal challenge that benefits both people and biodiversity (Figure 1). The deep connections of plants to other living and non-living components of ecosystems, and with human systems, underpin NbS.

Here we provide a collection of nine mini-reviews that presents focused analysis of the plant ecology of NbS and highlights key insights, challenges and opportunities for future research. As illustrated in our overview below, the mini-reviews cover a wide range of domains in which NbS are deployed: from multi-species pastures and grasslands to forests and coastal wetland systems (Figure 2). In this editorial, we identify three overarching themes, together with general challenges and opportunities that, we hope, will lead to new directions in both plant ecology research and the further development of NbS.

中文翻译：

---

植物生态学 基于自然的人类、生物多样性和气候解决方案

 1 引言

“简而言之——我们的世界需要在各个方面采取气候行动——一切，无处不在，同时进行”联合国秘书长安东尼奥·古特雷斯（Guterrez，2023 年）。

在地方和全球范围内，迫切需要减缓、阻止并最终逆转气候变化的解决方案，以及解决土地和水体不可持续利用的解决方案，以使人类和自然能够在不断变化的地球上繁荣发展（Diaz 等人，2015 年;IPBES，2019 年）。需要加快气候行动以实现《巴黎协定》（联合国，2015 年）的雄心壮志，需要保护和恢复生物多样性以履行昆明-蒙特利尔全球生物多样性框架（生物多样性公约，2022 年）的承诺。然而，气候和生物多样性危机密切相关，不能孤立地解决（InterAcademy Partnership，2021;Pörtner等人，2021 年）。气候和生物多样性危机的综合解决方案（Gorman 等人，2023 年）以及其他全球可持续发展挑战，包括确定、设计和实施基于自然的解决方案 （NbS）。

“基于自然的解决方案”是一个总称，包括生态学的许多现有应用（Cohen-Shacham et al.， 2016;Seddon et al.， 2020）。NbS 的所有定义都包括在自然和有管理的生态系统中采取行动的概念，为气候变化等全球挑战提供解决方案，同时造福人类并保护和恢复生物多样性。NbS 从根本上讲是关于人类如何与生物多样性互动，无论是作为生态系统管理者还是所提供生态系统服务的受益者（图 1）。人是NbS概念的核心，既是管理者也是受益者（Standish & Parkhurst， 2024）。然而，作为生态系统的主要生产者和地球上的主要生命形式（Bar-On et al.， 2018），植物是 NbS 的核心，而植物生态学则是理解 NbS 如何以及为什么工作的核心。

植物为减缓和适应气候变化提供了解决方案;它们调节生物地球化学循环、温室气体 （GHG） 通量和地球系统，并调节气候对生态系统功能和复原力的影响。植物生态学应用于与 NbS 相关的各个领域有着悠久的历史，包括基于生态系统的方法、农业生态学、林业、恢复、保护和用于害虫控制的种群生态学。植物生态学可以为开发和评估 NbS 提供基础，该基础基于对生态系统服务流向人类的生态过程的理解。NbS 与更普遍的生态学应用的不同之处在于，NbS 解决了对人类和生物多样性都有利的社会挑战（图 1）。植物与生态系统的其他生物和非生物成分以及人类系统的深度联系是 NbS 的基础。

在这里，我们提供了九篇迷你综述的集合，这些综述对 NbS 的植物生态学进行了重点分析，并强调了未来研究的关键见解、挑战和机遇。正如我们下面的概述所示，小型综述涵盖了部署 NbS 的广泛领域：从多物种牧场和草原到森林和沿海湿地系统（图 2）。在这篇社论中，我们确定了三个总体主题，以及一般的挑战和机遇，我们希望这些挑战和机遇将为植物生态学研究和 NbS 的进一步发展带来新的方向。