Nature-Based Solutions in Action

Nature-based solutions work with natural systems to address environmental challenges.

After severe flooding in 2019, Terrain NRM restored two erosion hotspots in the Mossman catchment—Bamboo Creek and the Mossman River—using nature-based solutions (NbS).

Five years on, these sites show how working with natural systems—not against them—can stabilise riverbanks, support vegetation, and improve resilience to future floods.

The two sites, one at Bamboo Creek (BC-1) and one on the Mossman River (MR-2) were restored using a combination of nature-based engineering techniques and revegetation. Thanks to funding from the Minderoo Foundation, we’ve been able to revisit these sites to see how they fared after major weather events, including during Tropical Cyclone Jasper (2023), and to understand how Nature-based solutions perform under real-world conditions in the Wet Tropics.

Lessons learnt

1. Smart design starts with the right location
Nature-based solutions succeed when they match the natural behaviour of the river. At the Bamboo Creek site, revegetation has thrived because it was placed above the active channel, where it is only occasionally inundated. This reduced exposure to strong flows and erosion, allowing vegetation to establish and mature along the bank. Placing vegetation in lower, high-energy zones significantly increases impacts from flooding.

2. Nature-based solutions can significantly reduce erosion
At the Mossman River site, timber pile fields reduced erosive forces dramatically by up to 75–90% in smaller flows and by around 50–75% in larger flows. During Tropical Cyclone Jasper, the site experienced far less damage than was expected. Well-designed NbS can therefore meaningfully reduce the physical forces that drive erosion and protect both land and infrastructure.

3. After big change, smaller floods can cause bigger damage
One key finding from the report is that changes in site hydrology require adaptive design. Although the site emerged from Tropical Cyclone Jasper with minimal impact, smaller flood events in 2026 caused significantly greater erosion and vegetation loss. The cumulative effects of the cyclone over the following three years fundamentally altered the Mossman River system, creating conditions that the original, site-specific nature-based design was not equipped to withstand.

4. Rivers change – designs must adapt too
Sediment deposited after Tropical Cyclone Jasper raised the riverbed at the Mossman River site by over one metre. This reduced channel capacity and increased flooding risk. This meant smaller floods began behaving more like larger events so NbS require adaptive management, rather than a “set and forget” approach to continue to protect the sites from the impacts of flooding.