Wild features are important to people’s park experiences in nearly every case; for example, “spotting a Bald Eagle” (photo by Paul Konrad).

Experiencing wildness is particularly important for physical and mental health, according to a study published recently in the journal Frontiers in Sustainable Cities by the University of Washington (UW). Past research has found health and wellness benefits of nature for humans, but this is the first study to show that wildness in urban areas is profoundly important for human well-being. But it’s unusual to find places in a city that are relatively wild – even though our evolutionary history, and the UW study suggests we need interactions with wild nature to thrive.

The new study found that not all forms of nature are created equal when considering benefits to people’s well-being. “It was clear from our results that different kinds of nature can have different effects on people,” said lead author Elizabeth Lev, a graduate student in the UW School of Environmental and Forest Sciences. “The wilder areas in an urban park seem to be affording more benefits to people, and their most meaningful interactions depended on those relatively wild features.”

While this information likely holds true in most major cities, the research team focused on Discovery Park in Seattle, the city’s most expansive urban park, which encompasses about 500 acres. The park is located less than a 20-minute drive from downtown, and has faced development pressures common for parks in cities with burgeoning populations.

Discovery Park’s advisory board asked the UW researchers to look at what elements were most important to people who visit, with the goal of gaining usable information for decision-makers. “We looked at Discovery Park, but this is about the entire planet,” said senior author Peter Kahn, a UW professor of environmental and forest sciences, and psychology. “Everywhere, development is chipping away at wild areas. Humanity has caused so much destruction and there's no stopping it – unless we stop. We’re trying to show that if you're going to develop an area, you at least need to understand the human costs.”

The research team surveyed several hundred park-goers, asking them to submit a written summary online of a meaningful interaction they had with nature in Discovery Park. Thereafter, researchers coded all experiences into categories. Across the 320 participant submissions, a pattern of categories the researchers call a “nature language” began to emerge. After coding all of the submissions, half a dozen categories, which the researchers call “interaction patterns,” were noted most often as important to visitors. These include encountering wildlife, walking along the edge of water, gazing out at a view, and following an established trail.

Additionally, the researchers looked at whether the park’s area of relative wildness was important in each visitor’s most meaningful experiences in the park. They defined “relatively wild” as including Discovery Park’s varied and relatively unmanaged land, its high levels of biodiversity, its “big nature” like old growth trees, large open spaces, expansive vistas, and people’s experience of the park’s solitude.

These wild features were important to people’s experiences in nearly every case. For example, “spotting a Bald Eagle” references a wild bird, and “watching birds perched in an old growth tree,” denotes wildlife in a wild habitat. Naming each nature experience creates a usable language, which is important for people to be able to recognize and take part in the activities that are most fulfilling and meaningful to them.

“We’re losing the language of interaction with nature, and as we do we also lose the cultural practice of these deep forms of interaction with nature, the wellsprings of human existence,” Kahn said. “We’re trying to generate a nature language that helps bring these human-nature interactions back into our daily lives. And for that to happen, we also need to protect nature so we can interact with it.”

The researchers hope this study and future projects conducted in other cities can be used as part of the decision-making process for development proposals in parks and urban natural areas. To help with this process, they compiled their analysis methods into a handbook that can be used to undertake similar studies in other cities around the world.

You can reference this article in Science Daily at https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/02/200226130524.htm