Time spent in nature can reduce anxiety and help you sleep better at night, experts have found. It also offers promising benefits for a range of health issues, including cardiovascular disease, depression and obesity.
But there are still many questions about how time in nature can help with these health conditions, and others. A new University of Washington initiative announced this week seeks to advance research on these questions, connecting academic researchers with pediatricians, childcare providers, mental health practitioners and others who work with various populations on critical health issues.
“The Nature for Health initiative is aimed at accelerating our understanding of the health impacts of time spent in nature,” said Joshua Lawler, the initiative’s lead and a UW professor in the School of Environmental and Forest Sciences. “The group is not only about doing this critical research, but also about applying it to create programs and policies that are good for human health.”
One fall day on Washington’s Mount Rainier, Josh Brandon and a group of fellow active duty platoon leaders discovered something about the outdoors that could improve the lives of veterans.
It was September 2009 and the group had decided to make a late-season summit attempt of Washington’s highest peak as part of a team-building exercise. The platoon leaders, who were all members of the same infantry company, began their climb in the early morning hours. Conditions were windy—a storm was forecast for later that day. About halfway up Disappointment Cleaver, the team paused to collect their bearings and a leader was hit in the neck with a boulder, resulting in a spinal contusion. Drawing on their previous military training, the group treated his injury and evacuated him to safety by nightfall.
“We figured out that mountaineering replicated the best parts of combat,” said Brandon, 41, who is now an Outdoor Research athlete and a graduate student and research program manager at the University of Washington. “A small, tight group. Taking risks. Facing adversity. Out there in nature.”
We’re living in the Anthropocene, or the epoch in which humans are—for the first time—the dominant driver of global change related to climate and the environment. As polar ice melts, sea levels rise, and storm and wildfire seasons get longer and more intense, climate projections suggest the Earth will be several degrees warmer by 2100. Although most Americans say climate change is an important topic, research shows fewer than half see it talked about in the media and just one in five discuss it with their peers. Science communication, or moving science outside the walls of academia, isn’t easy—but it’s imperative. Tyler Ung wants to play a role in that imperative.
Tyler is a 2018 graduate of the University of Washington’s Program on the Environment, a bachelor of arts degree offered through the College of the Environment.
He’s an artist and an academic—an atypical combination that may become more less-so as institutions, organizations, and individuals see the value of communicating science through both academic and cultural lenses. Tyler believes people practicing both disciplines within their traditional silos falls short in reaching the public, especially when it comes to contextualizing the precarious situations we face.
“In science, we’re taught to act inhuman to remain objective. On the other hand, art has been a method of communication since our ancestors could draw on rocks, but a common response to art is, ‘I don’t get it,” he said. “If we’ve got senators throwing snowballs, we know we have a gap in communicating science into public discourse.”
Tyler Ung
Recent UW Program on the Environment alum Tyler Ung.
As an intern at UW’s Center for Creative Conservation, now fully integrated in EarthLab, Tyler developed a senior project focusing on the budding “sci-art” movement, a concept that bridges the science communication gap through creative expression. Working with Sara Jo Breslow, an environmental anthropologist and the Center’s program manager, he wanted to know if sci-art could truly increase environmental awareness, where and how it’s currently being employed, and to try his hand at creating sci-art.
Tyler developed three categories that sci-art efforts commonly incorporate to appeal to individuals’ hearts and minds. Based on Kathleen Dean Moore’s book Moral Ground, he looked at sci-art projects through anthro-centric, bio-centric, and human virtue-oriented lenses. That is, sci-art often speaks to people by appealing to their sense of moral obligation to future generations of humans, the Earth itself and all its creatures and/or compassion and preservation for oneself.
Digging deeper, he wanted to see sci-art efforts and opportunities around the globe. In addition to examining the Pacific Northwest, Tyler analyzed sci-art’s prevalence through two study abroad experiences offered through the University of Washington. He traveled to China with Program on the Environment Lecturer Kristi Straus, as part of her “international flipped classroom” partnership with Tsinghua University in Beijing, as well as spent time in Bangalore, India with UW’s Grand Challenges Impact Lab.
“China, India, and the US. heavily impact the trajectory towards a more livable future. They hold records as one of the biggest emitters, highest in urban population growth and most wasteful per capita,” he said. “This inspired me to examine and connect these three cities and countries.”
Through site visits, walking tours and informal interviews, Tyler concluded that integration between arts and sciences were lacking—especially at the large research-focused academic institution he surveyed in China.
“They’re doing great environmental research [at Tsinghua University], but it’s very hard science-based. Based on the conversations I had with students and researchers, there isn’t a lot of opportunity for multi-disciplinary work between the arts and sciences .”
Tyler Ung
Originami by Tyler Ung.
Back in Seattle, his hometown, and informed by both his qualitative and quantitative research, Tyler began building out his own sci-art works—a set of mixed-media images combining photos and line-drawings. In each piece, he alludes to the disassociation of everyday life from the grand scale of environmental issues we face. Recently, he has displayed his works—a collection called A Mind’s Meadow: Beauty Beyond Suppression—at Pioneer AXIS Gallery in Seattle, as well as the university’s EarthDay and TEDx events.
Tyler Ung
Bare Necessities by Tyler Ung.
“It’s inspiring to hear other peoples’ perspectives of my art—it solidifies the value and beauty of the work as their ideas expand beyond my initial considerations,” he said.
Tyler Ung
Lost Loris by Tyler Ung.
Tyler says that we see art and design in everything we do, from business to academics to walking down the street. When sci-art becomes a more prominent way to communicate about environmental issues, he thinks there’s a huge opportunity to display that work in a variety of contexts and mediums.
Achieving these goals on a broader, more global scale still presents a host of challenges. One of the biggest challenges sci-art—and environmental education, in general—faces is that it’s difficult to trace and measure its impact. Still, Tyler is optimistic about the movement’s ability to create meaningful change in the face of rapid global shifts.
“Art has prominently influenced our histories, values and cultural identities, but we’ve removed that human-ness from the way we talk about science and research. People are seeing sci-art as a way to engage in big conversations now, and they’re seeing that we need to talk about the human-environment dynamic as much as we need the facts and technologies coming out of science,” he said. “The concept of sci-art is growing, and my hope is that it breaks apart the echo chambers of information that exist within every group and community.”
After a summer of travel and freelance work, Tyler wants to study the connections between arts and sciences, as well as environmental sociology at the graduate-level.
Can exposure and access to nature give a boost to human health? That question was front and center at the EarthLab Center for Creative Conservation’s recently convened Northwest Nature and Health Symposium. On tap for the day were leaders in education, planning and conservation — including former secretary of the interior Sally Jewell — all exploring the health benefits that come with being outside. Topics ranged from the latest innovations in research, policy and practice to a discussion of opportunities to expand the potential of nature to improve our health. The day ended with Secretary Jewell giving the inaugural Doug Walker Lecture on nature and health to a packed house in Seattle’s Benaroya Hall.
In a testament to the power of connecting nature to human health, a story ran in the Seattle Times the day following the symposium highlighting an Army veteran’s search for healing by hiking from Mexico to Canada. EarthLab and Center for Creative Conservation leadership wrote a Letter to the Editor, affirming the restorative value of nature and advocating that access to nature be made equally available to everyone.
We know that connecting with nature is good for us, but there are still many questions that need to be answered through more credible scientific research: What is the ideal “dose” of nature? What health conditions do these doses actually help with? Does duration and frequency of dose matter? How long do the benefits last? Does who you are and where you live impact how beneficial exposure to nature will be? And how does technology help or interfere with our connection to nature? The EarthLab Nature and Health working group dug into these questions and more.
At a time of increasing disconnectedness from nature, scientific interest in the potential health benefits of connecting with nature has grown. Research in recent decades has yielded substantial evidence of nature’s health benefits, but large gaps still remain. Lead by Howard Frumkin, the Center for Creative Conservation’s Nature and Health working group published a proposed research agenda on nature contact and health. The paper exhaustively reviews the existing literature on the health benefits of being in nature and identifies seven major domains in which further research is needed:
mechanistic biomedical studies look at how nature improves human health, such as by facilitating physical activity, a sense of wonder, and social connections
exposure science develops methods and metrics, both quantitative and qualitative, for measuring what counts as “nature contact” and a meaningful “dose”
epidemiology of health benefits examines the health outcomes of being in nature, from reducing pain and stress to reducing the risk of getting cancer
diversity and equity considerations underscore the need to account for cultural differences and inequities in understanding the nature-health connection, from unequal access to nature, to disparate ways of valuing nature, to the phenomenon of “green gentrification”
technological nature refers to technologies that mediate the nature experience, such as apps and virtual reality, and the question of whether these have the same or different health benefits as being in real natural places
economic and policy studies refer to cost-benefit analyses of the health benefits, avoided medical costs, and other services provided by ecosystems, and policy implications for conservation and planning
implementation science develops and evaluates the tools and actions that best deliver the benefits of nature, such as how to best design parks, trails and schools, and how doctors can best “prescribe nature.”
Three earth-friendly video games won awards at the Center for Creative Conservation’s inaugural EarthGames on Tap event, which took place May 18, 2017 in Seattle. Twelve stunning “earthgames” were entered into the games showcase. A panel of three judges carefully evaluated the games based on their potential to have an environmental impact and the quality of their game play. In the judges’ competition, Shelter 2 won first place and Walden won second place.
Time spent in nature can reduce anxiety and help you sleep better at night, experts have found. It also offers promising benefits for a range of health issues, including cardiovascular disease, depression and obesity.
