Nature-Based Solutions for Low-Carbon Cooling and Heat Resilience in Cities

Urban environments today face escalating socio environmental pressures from climate change, biodiversity loss, resource depletion, and intensifying extreme weather events. As cities experience rising temperatures, growing cooling demand, and declining ecological function, there is an urgent need for solutions that strengthen ecosystem resilience while supporting sustainable resource management. Nature-based solutions offer multifunctional pathways to address these challenges by harnessing natural processes to improve microclimates, enhance environmental health, and reduce carbon and water footprints. Integrating green and blue infrastructure within the built environment such as urban forests, wetlands, and vegetated systems supports climate adaptation, disaster risk reduction, and low carbon development while delivering vital ecosystem services. Advancing scientific understanding of these strategies is essential for achieving global sustainability goals, including SDGs 6, 7, 11, 12, 13, 14, and 15.

The aim of this Research Topic is to address the escalating challenge of urban overheating, rising cooling demand, and increasing exposure to extreme heat, which collectively threaten environmental health, energy systems, and community well being. Traditional cooling technologies often intensify energy consumption and carbon emissions, underscoring the need for alternative strategies that enhance ecological resilience while reducing environmental impact. This Research Topic seeks to advance knowledge on how nature-based solutions including urban forests, wetlands, green roofs and walls, blue green corridors, and water sensitive design can provide low carbon cooling, mitigate heat risks, and improve urban microclimates. By examining performance, implementation models, co benefits, and integration across urban, peri urban, and rural contexts, this collection aims to identify scalable, resource efficient pathways for heat resilient development. Ultimately, the goal is to support evidence based solutions that strengthen climate adaptation, reduce carbon and water footprints, and contribute to global sustainability efforts, particularly SDGs 6, 7, 11, 12, and 13.

This Research Topic focuses on advancing scientific and practical understanding of nature-based solutions for low carbon cooling and heat resilience across urban, peri urban, and rural contexts. We welcome studies examining how green and blue infrastructure can mitigate heat stress, reduce energy and water footprints, enhance ecosystem services, and strengthen climate adaptation.

Themes of interest include:
• Urban forests, green roofs/walls, wetlands, and blue green corridors for cooling
• Microclimate regulation and urban heat island mitigation
• Building and city scale energy and thermal comfort improvements
• Carbon and water footprint reduction
• GIS based analysis, modelling, and scenario assessments
• Co benefits: pollutant removal, biodiversity, disaster risk reduction
• Policy, governance, and implementation frameworks for NBS

Manuscript types encouraged:
• Original Research, Reviews, Systematic Reviews, Methods, Perspectives, Policy Briefs, Mini Reviews, Community Case Studies, Technology and Code submissions

Submissions should provide rigorous, interdisciplinary insights that support SDGs 6, 7, 11, 12, and 13.

Article types and fees

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Community Case Study
• Curriculum, Instruction, and Pedagogy
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• FAIR² DATA Direct Submission
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• ... View all formats

Articles that are accepted for publication by our external editors following rigorous peer review incur a publishing fee charged to Authors, institutions, or funders.

Article types

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Community Case Study
• Curriculum, Instruction, and Pedagogy
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• FAIR² DATA Direct Submission
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Policy and Practice Reviews
• Policy Brief
• Review
• Systematic Review
• Technology and Code

Keywords: urban heat island, cooling demand, blue green infrastructure, green roofs/walls, urban forests, heatwave adaptation, building energy, thermal comfort, carbon footprint, resilience, co-benefits, ircular economy, greenhouse gas emissions, pollutant removal

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.