94% of researchers rate our articles as excellent or good
Learn more about the work of our research integrity team to safeguard the quality of each article we publish.
Find out more
ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Environmental Health and Exposome
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1563340
Nature's impact on human health and wellbeing: The scale matters
Provisionally accepted- 1 Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Bolzano, Italy
- 2 University of Hildesheim, Hildesheim, Lower Saxony, Germany
- 3 Bielefeld University, Bielefeld, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany
Contact with nature can have a significant influence on human physical and mental health and wellbeing. As such, various concepts and theories as well as therapeutic approaches have been developed. The term "nature", however, covers a broad range of size and scales, ranging from individuals or small groups of animals or plants, certain ecosystems towards landscapes. The purpose of this paper is to differentiate concepts, theories, and therapy forms according to the scales of nature. We base our conceptional approach on the biological/ecological scales of species/individuals, ecosystems/land-use types, and landscapes. Based on a review, we differentiate the current state of the utilization of greenspace exposure measurements and measures assessing mental health according to these scales. We argue that a clear differentiation of biological and ecological scales provides a better understanding of the impact of nature with its components, characteristics, and dynamics on human health and wellbeing. Our paper also supports further inter-and transdisciplinary research as well as methodological approaches with regard to environment and health, such as environmental public health.
Keywords: Conceptualization, Writing -original draft, Writing -review & editing, Visualization, Funding acquisition, Hannah-Lea Schmid: Conceptualization, writingreview & editing, Visualization, Julius Freymüller: Writing -review & editing Claudia Hornberg: Funding acquisition, writing -review & editing, Timothy Mc biophilia, exposure measurements, greenspace, landscape, therapeutic landscapes
Received: 19 Jan 2025; Accepted: 18 Feb 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Zerbe, Schmid, Hornberg, Freymueller and Mc Call. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Stefan Zerbe, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Bolzano, Italy
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.