Mardie Townsend, Claire Henderson-Wilson, Elyse Warner and Lauren Weiss, School of Health and Social Development, Deakin University, recently prepared Healthy Parks Healthy People: the State of the Evidence 2015 for Parks Victoria (Australia).  The 103 page document reviews the post-2008 scientific literature in relation to the health benefits of parks and natural spaces.  The attempt is […]

Back in 1999 the U.S. Department of Agriculture  published Natural Amenities Drive Rural Population Change by David A. McGranahan of the Food and Rural Economics Division, Economic Research Service. His thesis is that where natural resources like timber, coal, farmland and the like were once the main attraction for people, more recently aesthetic attributes have been attracting people to different […]

To do their thing, explorers first learn everything they can from those that have come before.  Several years ago the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) delivered some results from their explorations that gave us more to know about Crater Lake, located in Crater Lake National Park, Oregon, the deepest lake in the United States.  A lake once believed to […]

Science Supports Nature “In our studies, people with less access to nature show relatively poor attention or cognitive function, poor management of major life issues, poor impulse control,” says Frances Kuo, a professor of natural resources and environmental science and psychology at Illinois University.  She has examined the relationships between people and the natural environment from […]

As defined by psychologists, rumination is the compulsively focused attention on the symptoms of one’s distress, and on its possible causes and consequences, as opposed to its solutions.  Rumination is similar to worry except rumination focuses on bad feelings and experiences from the past, whereas worry is concerned with potential bad events in the future.  Both rumination and worry are […]

After surveying 2000 parents across the United Kingdom, adventure blog Go Ape decided that the current generation of kids should be called the “Closeted Generation” because they are spending too much time indoors in front of a screen.  They found that 22% of parents put their kids in front of a screen “because its easier” even though […]

Omid Kardan, Department of Psychology, The University of Chicago, and his research team took two data sets and analyzed them to find that the more greenspace available, in the form of tree canopy along roads, the better it is for health. Study Background The first dataset combined satellite data with a database of all trees […]

Looking for an unusual reason to get outdoors and explore? How about frog photography? Check out this great video to learn more about how Robin Moore, conservationist and photographer, combines photography and frogs: Video Link: vimeo.com/124837993 Please Share #frogs #frogphotography

Correlating Cognitive Development and Green Space Thirteen researchers from Spain, Norway and the United States recently published the results of their analysis of the relationship between cognitive development in kids (age 7 to 10) and their exposure to outdoor green space.  They tested cognitive performance every three months for a year for  2,593 kids in […]

If you are looking to combine hiking with some citizen science, Jasper National Park in Canada, is offering an interesting option. The Park is seeking volunteers to help with the first year of a pilot project to sample and analyze the DNA of black and grizzly bears in the park. Samples are taken from bear […]