Health, Wellbeing, Performance and Learning in Extreme Contexts and Natural Environments

Over the last few decades, there has been a surge of interest in activities undertaken in the natural world specifically relating to learning, performance and health and wellbeing. The natural world has been promoted as an ideal medium for health and well-being for many reasons. Equally, there has been increased interest in performance in extreme environments including military operations, scientific discovery, space exploration and adventurous leisure activities. Learning from the experiences of participants has contributed to our understanding of the broader human condition. The momentum to increase this understanding and direct it to action seems to be intensifying. For many, the health and wellbeing relationship has facilitated calls to more effectively integrate nature into health and wellbeing practice, such as through social prescribing and more effective approaches to nature prescribing in public health more broadly. However, we know little about how best to make this happen.

Emerging research points to a subtle and interconnected relationship between performance in natural environments and well-being. There is limited understanding of the impact of specific environments. For instance, would an intervention designed and implemented in a lush, green, deciduous forest in the northern hemisphere easily translate to a sub-tropical or dry southern hemisphere environment, or does the environment have a more subtle impact on outcomes? Further, despite the plethora of evidence that nature experiences benefit health, systematic approaches to interventions, such as nature prescriptions, are rare. There is a pressing need for clarity on these issues, for example, understanding how best to design community nature prescription systems and the possible impact of success. Equally, it is important to appreciate the possible negative impact of nature on human health (e.g. from fires and floods and performance in extreme natural environments) and how this might impact on health interventions and the design of learning experiences. For example, how best to design adventure sport interventions or how can we use the learning in extreme sport contexts to benefit the community.

As research in this area is inevitably multi-disciplinary it is important that we accept a broad understanding of knowledge and research as these might reveal more nuanced perspectives of the human dimension of participation in natural environments.

This Research Topic brings together cutting-edge research, reconceptualising ‘Health, Wellbeing, Performance and Learning in Extreme Contexts and Natural Environments’.
In particular, this article collection aims to present research and conceptual ideas that broadly examine:

• Strategies that facilitate performance in extreme natural environments;
• Individual or community experiences of being in, or engaging with natural environments;
• Effects of natural environments on psychological and/or social aspects of performance;
• Relationships between performance in natural environments and health and well-being;
• Methodological issues related to natural environment research;
• Conceptual frameworks guiding natural environment research, practice, education and/or policy;
• Definitions guiding natural environment research, practice, education and/or policy;
• The interface between natural environments and health and community services;
• Translation, dissemination and/or implementation of evidence from natural environment research.