Bridging Design and Climate Realities: A Meta-Synthesis of Coastal Landscape Interventions and Climate Integration

Abstract

This paper is aimed at landscape managers and designers. It looks at 123 real-world coastal landscape projects and organizes them into clear design categories, i.e., wetland restoration, hybrid infrastructure, or urban green spaces. We looked at how these projects were framed (whether they focused on climate adaptation, flood protection, or other goals) and how they tracked performance. We are hoping to bring some clarity to a very scattered field, helping us to see patterns in what is actually being carried out in terms of landscape interventions and increasing sea levels. We are hoping to provide a practical reference for making better, more climate-responsive design decisions. Coastal cities face escalating climate-driven threats from increasing sea levels and storm surges to urban heat islands. These threats are driving increased interest in nature-based solutions (NbSs) as green adaptive alternatives to traditional gray infrastructure. Despite an abundance of individual case studies, there have been few systematic syntheses aimed at landscape designers and managers linking design typologies, project framing, and performance outcomes. This study addresses this gap through a meta-synthesis of 123 implemented coastal landscape interventions aimed directly at landscape-oriented research and professions. Flood risk reduction was the dominant framing strategy (30.9%), followed by climate resilience (24.4%). Critical evidence gaps emerged—only 1.6% employed integrated monitoring approaches, 30.1% provided ambiguous performance documentation, and mean monitoring quality scored 0.89 out of 5.0. While 95.9% of the projects acknowledged SLR as a driver, only 4.1% explicitly integrated climate projections into design parameters. Community monitoring approaches demonstrated significantly higher ecosystem service integration, particularly cultural services (36.4% vs. 6.9%, (Formula presented.)), and enhanced monitoring quality (mean score 1.64 vs. 0.76, (Formula presented.)). Implementation barriers spanned technical constraints, institutional fragmentation, and data limitations, each affecting 20.3% of projects. Geographic analysis revealed evidence generation inequities, with systematic underrepresentation of high-risk regions (Africa: 4.1%; Latin America: 2.4%) versus concentration in well-resourced areas (North America: 27.6%; Europe: 17.1%).