Fast Fact Library

Greening in and around schoolyards can improve academic achievement. A study of 450 public schools in Washington state showed positive relationships between school greenness and academic achievement in sixth graders...

Kuo, Ming, Samantha E Klein, Matthew HEM Browning, and Jaime Zaplatosch. “Greening for academic achievement: Prioritizing what to plant and where.” Landscape and Urban Planning 206 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landurbplan.2020.103962.

Time spent in nature may buffer the consequences of high "screen time" in children and adolescents, according to a systematic scoping review of 186 studies from the United States and Europe.

Oswald, Tassia K., Alice R. Rumbold, Sophie G. E. Kedzior, and Vivienne M. Moore. “Psychological impacts of ‘screen time’ and ‘green time’ for children and adolescents: A systematic scoping review.” PLOS ONE 15, no. 9 (2020): 1-52. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0237725

A systematic review of research on the effectiveness of nature-based solutions for addressing climate impacts showed that that of 293 interventions, 59% reduced adverse climate impacts. Overall, the studies that...

Chausson, Alexandre, Beth Turner, Dan Seddon, Nicole Chabaneix, Cécile A. J. Girardin, Valerie Kapos, Isabel Key, Dilys Roe, Alison Smith, Stephen Woroniecki, and Nathalie Seddon. “Mapping the effectiveness of nature-based solutions for climate change adaptation.” Global Change Biology 26, 11 (2020): 6134-6155. https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.15310.

In a study of 13 French urban green spaces, visitors reported improved mental restoration in spaces where they perceived more mixing of vegetation like woodlands, shrubs, herbaceous areas, flower areas, water areas...

Meyer-Grandbastien, Alice, Françoise Burel, Emmanuelle Hellier, and Benjamin Bergerot. “A Step Towards Understanding the Relationship Between Species Diversity and Psychological Restoration of Visitors in Urban Green Spaces Using Landscape Heterogeneity.” Landscape and Urban Planning 195 (2020) https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landurbplan.2019.103728

Designing streets to be more people-friendly has positive impacts on physical activity, active transportation, safety, social interaction, and social capital. These benefits were identified through a literature...

Bertolini, Luca. “From ‘streets for traffic’ to ‘streets for people’: can street experiments transform urban mobility? Transport Reviews, 40.6 (2020): 734-753. https://doi.org/10.1080/01441647.2020.1761907

Increased bird biodiversity and greater habitat diversity in urban green spaces were associated with increased human happiness according to a study of visitors to 945 green spaces in Sheffield, United Kingdom.

Cameron, Ross W. F., Paul Brindley, Meghann Mears, Kirsten McEwan, Fiona Ferguson, David Sheffield, Anna Jorgensen, Julie Riley, Jon Goodrick, Liz Ballard, and Miles Richardson. “Where the wild things are! Do urban green spaces with greater avian biodiversity promote more positive emotions in humans?” Urban Ecosystems, 23 (2020): 301–317. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11252-020-00929-z

In an intervention-based study of 10 urban daycare centers in Finland, adding biodiverse material from the forest floor and sod to daycare yards diversified children's environmental and skin microbiota and made...

Roslund, Marja I. et al. “Biodiversity intervention enhances immune regulation and health-associated commensal microbiota among daycare children.” Science Advances 6, no. 42 (2020). https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aba2578

An analysis of satellite data for 14,000 cities and towns in the United States showed that areas within a 10-minute walk of a park can be up to 6° F cooler than areas further away from parks.

Trust for Public Land and MKThink. (2020). The Heat Is On: With temperatures rising and quality parks too few and far between, communities of color face a dangerous disparity. https://www.tpl.org/sites/default/files/The-Heat-is-on_A-Trust-for-Public-Land_special-report.pdf.

A cross-sectional study of almost 47,000 Australian residents showed that higher percentage of tree cover within one mile of their residence was associated with lower prevalence of diabetes, hypertension, and...

Thomas Astell-Burt, and Feng, Xiaoqi. “Urban green space, tree canopy and prevention of cardiometabolic diseases: a multilevel longitudinal study of 46,786 Australians.” International Journal of Epidemiology 49, Issue 3 (2020): 926–933. https://doi.org/10.1093/ije/dyz239.

Trees with small leaf size and high leaf complexity and trees with long "in leaf" periods like evergreens generally make the most effective barriers against roadside pollution and offer the most air quality benefits...

Barwise, Yendle, and Prashant Kumar. “Designing vegetation barriers for urban air pollution abatement: a practical review for appropriate plant species selection” npj Climate and Atmospheric Science 3, no. 12 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41612-020-0115-3.