New paper: The effectiveness of Nature-Based Solutions in Mitigating Salt Intrusion in Estuaries A Review

We are happy to share this new paper "The Effectiveness of Nature-Based Solutions in Mitigating Salt Intrusion in Estuaries: A review", authored by Weiqiu Chen.

Salt intrusion is moving further up estuaries worldwide, threatening the freshwater that cities, farms, and industry depend on - and climate change plus ever-deeper shipping channels are accelerating it. Salt intrusion lengths in nine European estuaries are projected to grow 10-30% by the end of the century.

This new open-access review in Water Resources Research by Weiqiu Chen et al. is, the first to systematically ask whether nature-based solutions can actually push the salt back. It maps out six measures - river-discharge management, reducing the channel cross-section, reshaping the bed (sills, sand dunes), the convergence-friction balance, enlarging intertidal areas, and introducing meanders - and sorts them into two families:
• Advection-based measures, which drive the salt structure seaward and work across a wide range of estuaries (up to 40% shorter intrusion length).
• Mixing-based measures, which break down stratification and are most effective where the estuary is at least somewhat stratified.

The paper is co-authored by Bas Borsje, Rutger Siemes, Jesse Bootsma, Pieter Roos, Wessel van der Sande, Eleonora Saccon, Gijs Hendrickx,  & Suzanne Hulscher

Open access:  https://doi.org/10.1029/2025WR042684