Nature-based Solutions (NbS) have received worldwide attention from academics, governments, NGOs and the public in the field of ecological conservation and restoration. Since NbS was formally proposed, its concept has been continuously clarified and refined under the promotion of international organizations such as EU and IUCN, and was officially defined by the United Nations in 2022. The theory and technology of NbS have been gradually developed and perfected by fully admitting the basic theories of ecology, geography and other disciplines, as well as integrating and developing ecological conservation and restoration-related technologies. In recent years, a large number of research results have been achieved in the construction of NbS theoretical system, development of technical model, identification of pathways and estimation of potentials in coping with climate change, synergistic response to social challenges, management model and financial mechanism, and the direction of future development etc., providing strong reference values for ecological conservation and restoration practices. At present, as one of the most important measures for ecological civilization construction, NbS have a positive influence on the planning of ecological conservation and restoration of territorial space, and the integration of ecological conservation and restoration of mountains, waters, forests, farmlands, grasslands, and deserts, and significant results have been achieved in related projects and local practices. In the future, the application of NbS in China should focus on the following directions: (1) Continuously carry out theoretical and technical research to accurately grasp the intrinsic mechanisms of ecosystems. (2) Explore the localization pathway of NbS, implement NbS-based ecological conservation and restoration under the framework of China's territorial spatial planning and use control, and explore the coordination and integration with related project management requirements. (3) Apply NbS to promote the improvement of China's ecological conservation and restoration work with clarified social challenges, carry out monitoring and evaluation, adaptive management, update and improve the technical standards and norms system. (4) Innovate the funding mechanism, actively apply for relevant international projects, and explore the mechanism of transforming ecological benefits into economic benefits. (5) Carry out the application of NbS, comprehensively apply NbS in projects in key areas from planning and designing stage, and summarize practical experience to promote the overall improvement of China's ecological conservation and restoration work.

The ecological construction of Qinghai province over the past 70 years has gone through four stages. The practice has formed four typical ecological governance models, include ''Single ecological problem+Targeted engineering treatment'', ''Special ecological problem+Special ecological project'', ''Regional ecological planning+Multi-level special management organization+System management methods system'', ''Ecological protection and restoration planning system+Ecological management unit+Regional key project''. Based on problem orientation and goal orientation, four strategic paths are proposed, including ''strengthen research on scientific and technological issues and develop scientific and technological infrastructure, explore a new model of ecological protection and restoration, establish a top-down coordination mechanism for ecological protection and restoration, strengthen detailed management of ecological projects throughout their life cycle, pay attention to establishing a long-term mechanism for harmony between man and land''. This will provide a certain reference for realizing scientific, systematic, collaborative, precise and long-term ecological protection and restoration on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, and striving to build a new pattern of ecological protection and restoration on the plateau.

Within the domain of the Mountains-Waters project in the Irtysh River Basin, an assessment framework was constructed at the three scales of subproject, ecological protection unit, and restoration unit, and with consideration of the scope of the project, which includes ecosystem pattern, quality, services, coercion, and comprehensive effectiveness. Then, the ecological restoration effectiveness before and after implementation of the project was comprehensively and systematically assessed using relevant survey data. The principal conclusions follow: (1) There were significant shortterm differences between the ecological restoration areas of mines and nonmining areas. The ecological parameters in nonmining areas were superior to those in mining areas; however, the ecological effectiveness in mining areas has not yet manifest. (2) Compared to the baseline period, the ecological structure, quality, and service functions in the subproject area improved during the evaluation period. The overall increase in ecological service function exceeded 5%, with a decrease in human disturbance, indicating significant restoration effectiveness in the project area and its direct impact zone. (3) The quality of ecosystems has been enhanced within the scope of the project and at the scale of ecological units, particularly in the Northern Altai Mountain region. Functions such as soil conservation, windbreaks, sand fixation, and biodiversity protection have improved, although enhancement of carbon sequestration has been modest. Except in the southern desert grasslands, water conservation capacity has declined, and humaninduced stressors have intensified. However, the ecosystems have generally maintained their baseline status and have partially improved. (4) Because of the limitations of the overall and systematic layout of the subproject implementation areas and the limited actual area of restoration and conservation, the effectiveness of the subproject implementation did not significantly impact the overall improvement of the watershed and the ecosystems of various ecological conservation units. The associated assessment results have significant relevance and value for sustainable management of the Irtysh River project.

Climate change is one of the main pressures that the ecological protection and restoration in Qinghai Plateau continues to face, yet there is currently a lack of quantitative analysis of the climate change pressure on ecological restoration projects across this region. Focusing on this issue, this study clarified the climate change process across Qinghai Plateau since 1960, analyzed the driving effects of climate change on the changes in land cover, and quantified the projected future climate change pressures that Qinghai would face during the 21st century, based on multi-source data. We found that Qinghai Plateau has experienced significant warming-wetting trends since 1960, with the change characterized by faster warming in the west than in the east and faster in winter than in summer. Affected by climate changes, the distribution of grass-shrubs in the study area generally expanded from 1980 to 2020, while degraded in the northwest. Climate predictions indicate that Qinghai Plateau is likely to face profound pressures from continued warming trends across the 21st century, especially for the south. Our findings could serve as data and theoretical support for the formulation of relevant climate mitigation and adaptation measures in the ecological protection and restoration projects of territorial space in the plateau.

The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework heralds a transformative vision for global biodiversity governance extending beyond 2030. In alignment with this framework, China has formulated its strategic approach and action plan for biodiversity conservation in the contemporary era. Taking Jiangsu province as a case study, our study explores the methodology of constructing avian diversity conservation patterns and optimizing ecological corridors at a provincial scale. We employed an integrated ecosystem structure and function evaluation method to identify the ecological sources, followed by the utilization of the MaxEnt model to focus on identifying the habitats of 64 species of rare forest birds and water birds within these sources. Based on the landscape resistance surface and least-cost path, we used the kernel analysis method to classify the habitat groups according to patch density. To delineate the spatial extent of ecological corridors, we applied the LSCorridors software package to optimize the proposed ecological corridors by identifying stepping-stones, barriers, and pinch points. Our results show that: (1) Ecological source areas showed a tendency to aggregate locally while remaining regionally isolated. The dominant landscape components included water bodies along with cultivated lands possessing high ecological value. (2) The habitat network for target species comprised 692 least-cost paths, 25 of which extended over 100 km, accounting for 36.72% of the total length, predominantly oriented in an east-west direction. (3) Spatial analysis identified ten distinct habitat groups within the study area, with four concentrated in southern Jiangsu and the others highly isolated. (4) The twelve identified crucial ecological corridors between these groups typically displayed cross-regional characteristics with multiple potential migration routes. For instance, one corridor required optimization at 114 strategic points, including 19 stepping stones, 45 barriers, and 50 pinch points. Our study offers valuable insights for the practical implementation of the Convention on Biological Diversity in China. It supports the comprehensive promotion of mainstreaming biodiversity conservation into ecological protection and restoration planning, serving as a reference for advancing these initiatives.