Psychological benefits of greenspace increase with biodiversity
TL;DR: It is demonstrated that greenspace users can more or less accurately perceive species richness depending on the taxonomic group in question, indicating that successful management of urban greenspaces should emphasize biological complexity to enhance human well-being in addition to biodiversity conservation.
Abstract: The world's human population is becoming concentrated into cities, giving rise to concerns that it is becoming increasingly isolated from nature. Urban public greenspaces form the arena of many people's daily contact with nature and such contact has measurable physical and psychological benefits. Here we show that these psychological benefits increase with the species richness of urban greenspaces. Moreover, we demonstrate that greenspace users can more or less accurately perceive species richness depending on the taxonomic group in question. These results indicate that successful management of urban greenspaces should emphasize biological complexity to enhance human well-being in addition to biodiversity conservation.
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TL;DR: In this paper, the authors reviewed the Anglo-American literature on urban green space, especially parks, and compared efforts to green US and Chinese cities and found that the distribution of such space often disproportionately benefits predominantly white and more affluent communities.
2,459 citations
Cites background from "Psychological benefits of greenspac..."
...Fuller et al. (2007) in Sheffield, England, found positive associations between species richness and psychological well-being, and FaberTaylor, Kuo, and Sullivan (2001) found that children with attention deficit disorder who were active in green space had reduced symptoms....
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TL;DR: It is suggestive that natural environments may have direct and positive impacts on well-being, but support the need for investment in further research on this question to understand the general significance for public health.
Abstract: There is increasing interest in the potential role of the natural environment in human health and well-being. However, the evidence-base for specific and direct health or well-being benefits of activity within natural compared to more synthetic environments has not been systematically assessed. We conducted a systematic review to collate and synthesise the findings of studies that compare measurements of health or well-being in natural and synthetic environments. Effect sizes of the differences between environments were calculated and meta-analysis used to synthesise data from studies measuring similar outcomes. Twenty-five studies met the review inclusion criteria. Most of these studies were crossover or controlled trials that investigated the effects of short-term exposure to each environment during a walk or run. This included 'natural' environments, such as public parks and green university campuses, and synthetic environments, such as indoor and outdoor built environments. The most common outcome measures were scores of different self-reported emotions. Based on these data, a meta-analysis provided some evidence of a positive benefit of a walk or run in a natural environment in comparison to a synthetic environment. There was also some support for greater attention after exposure to a natural environment but not after adjusting effect sizes for pretest differences. Meta-analysis of data on blood pressure and cortisol concentrations found less evidence of a consistent difference between environments across studies. Overall, the studies are suggestive that natural environments may have direct and positive impacts on well-being, but support the need for investment in further research on this question to understand the general significance for public health.
1,391 citations
Cites background from "Psychological benefits of greenspac..."
...The specific type and “quality” of the natural environment, for instance, its biodiversity value [50], could also be important, as well as the level of engagement of the individual with the environment [51] but this requires further study....
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TL;DR: In this article, the authors suggest mechanisms for encouraging "wildlife-friendly" management of collections of gardens across scales from the neighbourhood to the city, where the individual garden is much smaller than the unit of management needed to retain viable populations.
Abstract: As urbanisation increases globally and the natural environment becomes increasingly fragmented, the importance of urban green spaces for biodiversity conservation grows. In many countries, private gardens are a major component of urban green space and can provide considerable biodiversity benefits. Gardens and adjacent habitats form interconnected networks and a landscape ecology framework is necessary to understand the relationship between the spatial configuration of garden patches and their constituent biodiversity. A scale-dependent tension is apparent in garden management, whereby the individual garden is much smaller than the unit of management needed to retain viable populations. To overcome this, here we suggest mechanisms for encouraging 'wildlife-friendly' management of collections of gardens across scales from the neighbourhood to the city.
1,234 citations
University of Arizona1, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna2, Resources For The Future3, University of British Columbia4, Portland State University5, Stockholm University6, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign7, United States Department of Agriculture8, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne9, Indiana University10, University of Oregon11, University of East Anglia12, Ukrainian National Forestry University13, VU University Amsterdam14
TL;DR: A common representation is offered that frames cultural services, along with all ES, by the relative contribution of relevant ecological structures and functions and by applicable social evaluation approaches, which provides a foundation for merging ecological and social science epistemologies to define and integrate cultural services better within the broader ES framework.
Abstract: Cultural ecosystem services (ES) are consistently recognized but not yet adequately defined or integrated within the ES framework. A substantial body of models, methods, and data relevant to cultural services has been developed within the social and behavioral sciences before and outside of the ES approach. A selective review of work in landscape aesthetics, cultural heritage, outdoor recreation, and spiritual significance demonstrates opportunities for operationally defining cultural services in terms of socioecological models, consistent with the larger set of ES. Such models explicitly link ecological structures and functions with cultural values and benefits, facilitating communication between scientists and stakeholders and enabling economic, multicriterion, deliberative evaluation and other methods that can clarify tradeoffs and synergies involving cultural ES. Based on this approach, a common representation is offered that frames cultural services, along with all ES, by the relative contribution of relevant ecological structures and functions and by applicable social evaluation approaches. This perspective provides a foundation for merging ecological and social science epistemologies to define and integrate cultural services better within the broader ES framework.
1,184 citations
Cites background from "Psychological benefits of greenspac..."
...(77) surveyed visitors to urban/suburban parks and found that psychological well-being (gauged by factors derived from park visitor’s reports, including reflection, identity, and attraction) was positively correlated with the species richness and habitat diversity in the park....
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Institute of Ecosystem Studies1, University of California, Davis2, United States Forest Service3, Arizona State University4, Ohio State University5, Chesapeake Biological Laboratory6, The New School7, University of Missouri8, Johns Hopkins University9, University of Vermont10, University of Massachusetts Amherst11
TL;DR: The state factor approach is used to highlight the role of important aspects of climate, substrate, organisms, relief, and time in differentiating urban from non-urban areas, and for determining heterogeneity within spatially extensive metropolitan areas.
903 citations
Cites background from "Psychological benefits of greenspac..."
...Humans appear to notice both diversity and its absence (Fuller et al., 2007) as well as to actively foster certain species (DeStefano and DeGraaf, 2003)....
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References
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TL;DR: A series of common pitfalls in quantifying and comparing taxon richness are surveyed, including category‐subcategory ratios (species-to-genus and species-toindividual ratios) and rarefaction methods, which allow for meaningful standardization and comparison of datasets.
Abstract: Species richness is a fundamental measurement of community and regional diversity, and it underlies many ecological models and conservation strategies. In spite of its importance, ecologists have not always appreciated the effects of abundance and sampling effort on richness measures and comparisons. We survey a series of common pitfalls in quantifying and comparing taxon richness. These pitfalls can be largely avoided by using accumulation and rarefaction curves, which may be based on either individuals or samples. These taxon sampling curves contain the basic information for valid richness comparisons, including category‐subcategory ratios (species-to-genus and species-toindividual ratios). Rarefaction methods ‐ both sample-based and individual-based ‐ allow for meaningful standardization and comparison of datasets. Standardizing data sets by area or sampling effort may produce very different results compared to standardizing by number of individuals collected, and it is not always clear which measure of diversity is more appropriate. Asymptotic richness estimators provide lower-bound estimates for taxon-rich groups such as tropical arthropods, in which observed richness rarely reaches an asymptote, despite intensive sampling. Recent examples of diversity studies of tropical trees, stream invertebrates, and herbaceous plants emphasize the importance of carefully quantifying species richness using taxon sampling curves.
5,706 citations
"Psychological benefits of greenspac..." refers methods in this paper
...Species richness estimates (species density of Gotelli & Colwell 2001) were calculated using the second-order jackknife estimator computed over 1000 runs in the ESTIMATES software (Colwell 2005)....
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Book•
28 Jul 1989TL;DR: A study of the natural environment, people, and the relationship between them is presented in this paper, where the authors offer a research-based analysis of the vital psychological role that nature plays.
Abstract: A study of the natural environment, people, and the relationship between them. The authors offer a research-based analysis of the vital psychological role that nature plays. They try to understand how people perceive nature and what kinds of natural environments they prefer.
4,845 citations
"Psychological benefits of greenspac..." refers background in this paper
...Five statements measured likelihood of recovery from mental fatigue and the opportunity for reflection, derived from attention restoration theory (Kaplan & Kaplan 1989)....
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TL;DR: Surgical patients assigned to rooms with windows looking out on a natural scene had shorter postoperative hospital stays, received fewer negative evaluative comments in nurses' notes, and took fewer potent analgesics than matched patients in similar Rooms with windows facing a brick building wall.
Abstract: Records on recovery after cholecystectomy of patients in a suburban Pennsylvania hospital between 1972 and 1981 were examined to determine whether assignment to a room with a window view of a natural setting might have restorative influences. Twenty-three surgical patients assigned to rooms with windows looking out on a natural scene had shorter postoperative hospital stays, received fewer negative evaluative comments in nurses' notes, and took fewer potent analgesics than 23 matched patients in similar rooms with windows facing a brick building wall.
4,126 citations
"Psychological benefits of greenspac..." refers background in this paper
...In a now classic paper, Ulrich (1984) reported that post-surgical patients whose hospital windows overlooked trees, rather than a brick wall, recovered more rapidly and required less pain relief....
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TL;DR: A wide range of strategies to reduce impervious surfaces and their impacts on water resources can be applied to community planning, site-level planning and design, and land use regulation as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: Planners concerned with water resource protection in urbanizing areas must deal with the adverse impacts of polluted runoff. Impervious surface coverage is a quantifiable land-use indicator that correlates closely with these impacts. Once the role and distribution of impervious coverage are understood, a wide range of strategies to reduce impervious surfaces and their impacts on water resources can be applied to community planning, site-level planning and design, and land use regulation. These strategies complement many current trends in planning, zoning, and landscape design that go beyond water pollution concerns to address the quality of life in a community.
2,087 citations
"Psychological benefits of greenspac..." refers background in this paper
...Consideration of the quality of that space can ensure that it serves the multiple purposes of enhancing biodiversity, providing ecosystem services (Arnold & Gibbons 1996), creating opportunities for contact with nature (Miller 2005) and enhancing psychological well-being....
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TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that the sequential Bonferroni correction has several flaws ranging from mathematical to logical to practical that argue for rejecting this method in ecological studies, and more specifically, they argue for rejection of the sequentialBonfroni as a solution to this problem.
Abstract: Interpretation of results that include multiple statistical tests has been an issue of great concern for some time in the ecological literature. The basic problem is that when multiple tests are undertaken, each at the same significance level ( ), the probability of achieving at least one significant result is greater than that significance level (Zaykin et al. 2002). Therefore, there is an increased probability of rejecting a null hypothesis when it would be inappropriate to do so. The typical solution to this problem has been lowering the values for the table (i.e. establishing a table-wide significance level) and therefore reducing the probability of a spurious result. Specifically, the most common procedure has been the application of the sequential Bonferroni adjustment (Holm 1979, Miller 1981, Rice 1989). Arguments in this essay address the problems of adjusting probability values for tables of multiple statistical tests, and more specifically argue for rejection of the sequential Bonferroni as a solution to this problem. Since the influential publication of Rice (1989), the sequential Bonferroni correction has become the primary method of addressing the problem of multiple statistical tests in ecological research. The sequential Bonferroni adjusts the table-wide p-value to keep it constant at 0.05, and subsequently reduces the probability of a spurious result. Although other methods exist for addressing tables of multiple statistical tests, the sequential Bonferroni has become the most commonly utilized process. However, this method has several flaws ranging from mathematical to logical to practical that argue for rejecting this method in ecological studies.
1,475 citations
"Psychological benefits of greenspac..." refers methods in this paper
...While we recognize that care is needed when interpreting results of multiple comparisons, we did not apply a correction, as our contrasts were planned and we are studying a complex response (Moran 2003)....
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