Valuing the mental health and well-being benefits of nature engagement through measures of soundscape complexity

人们越来越认识到在大自然中度过时间对人类健康和福祉的价值和好处，世界各地的政府和组织正在制定绿色处方计划，通过与自然接触来治疗心理健康问题和支持心理健康。新冠肺炎大流行凸显了这种接触的价值，既体现在地方和国家封锁对心理健康的有害影响，也体现在人们在此期间广泛认识到参与自然活动的好处。来自自然的健康和福祉是全球重要的文化生态系统服务(CES)。然而，尽管我们知道可用自然空间的数量会影响这些CES，但这种空间质量的重要性在很大程度上仍然是未知的。我们对生物多样性的不同要素在推动自然-健康关系方面所起的作用和影响的了解也有限。这些知识差距限制了将这些CES系统地整合到更广泛的生态系统服务框架、保护和可持续发展政策以及景观和城市绿地管理中。声音在我们对自然的体验中发挥着关键作用，尤其是鸟鸣为我们在户外度过的时间提供了配乐。事实上，从沃恩·威廉的《云雀升天》到蕾切尔·卡森的《寂静的春天》，鸟鸣长期以来一直是我们与自然关系和我们对环境质量评估的决定性组成部分。这些声道或自然声景的声学特征很容易测量。鸟类经常被用作更广泛的生物多样性的指标，鸟类群落的组成是由许多因素驱动的，例如栖息地的可获得性和景观结构，这些因素也已知会影响自然体验的质量。因此，鸟类提供的声音景观的声学特征可以更全面地反映景观生物多样性的状况。因此，音景有可能通过自然参与来客观衡量生物多样性对心理健康和福祉的贡献，并使这些CES能够更充分地融入生态系统服务框架和自然资本政策和管理决策。在这个项目中，我们的学术研究人员团队和来自保护、心理健康、工业、规划和政策领域的主要利益相关者将发展对实现这一目标所需的景观结构、声景观复杂性、声景观质量感知、衍生的心理健康和福祉以及经济价值之间的机械理解。我们将不依赖于实际声景的记录，而是使用一种新的方法，将鸟类监测数据与现有的单个物种的记录相结合，以构建整个英国的模拟自然声景，并将它们的声学特性与当地栖息地和景观特征联系起来。我们还将利用实验室和在线实验，探索暴露在不同声学特征的声景中的短期反应和长期影响，研究推动这些关系强度变化的背景和个人因素。我们将研究支撑这些关系的心理机制，并调查人类噪音是否会减少自然音景的好处。我们还将把声景观特征的空间模式与精神健康指标和抗抑郁药物处方率联系起来，并量化人们为改善自然声景观质量而支付的意愿。综上所述，这些进展将使我们能够衡量、监测和预测自然声景观资源的时间和空间模式以及衍生效益的流动。

There is growing recognition of the value and benefits of spending time in nature for human health and well-being, with governments and organisations around the world now developing green prescribing programmes to treat mental health issues and support mental well-being through contact with nature. The COVID-19 pandemic has served to highlight the value of such contact, both in terms of the detrimental impacts of local and national lockdowns on mental health and the widespread appreciation of the benefits of nature engagement during this period. The health and well-being benefits derived from nature represent globally important cultural ecosystem services (CES). However, whilst we know that the quantity of natural space available can influence these CES, the importance of the quality of this space remains largely unknown. We also have only a limited understanding of the role and impact that different elements of biodiversity play in driving nature-health relationships. These knowledge gaps have limited the systematic integration of these CES into wider ecosystem service frameworks, conservation and sustainable development policies, and landscape and urban green-space management.Sound plays a key role in our experience of nature, with bird song in particular providing the soundtrack to time spent outdoors. Indeed, from Vaughan William's "The Lark Ascending", to Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring", bird song has long been a defining component of our relationship with nature and our assessment of environmental quality. The acoustic characteristics of these soundtracks, or natural soundscapes, can be readily measured. Birds are frequently used as an indicator of wider biodiversity and the composition of bird communities is driven by many factors, such as habitat availability and landscape structure, that are also known to influence the quality of nature experiences. The acoustic characteristics of soundscapes provided by birds can therefore indicate the state of landscape biodiversity more generally. As such, soundscapes have the potential to provide an objective measure of the contribution of biodiversity to mental health and well-being benefits though nature engagement and to enable fuller integration of these CES into the ecosystem service framework and into natural capital policy and management decisions. In this project, our team of academic researchers and key stakeholders from conservation, mental health, industry, planning and policy arenas will develop the mechanistic understanding of the pathways linking landscape structure, soundscape complexity, perceptions of soundscape quality, derived mental health and well-being benefits, and economic values required to achieve this. Rather than relying on recordings of actual soundscapes, we will use a novel approach that combines bird monitoring data with existing recordings of individual species to construct simulated natural soundscapes across the UK and relate their acoustic properties to local habitat and landscape characteristics. Using both laboratory and online experiments, we will also explore short-term responses to and long-term implications of exposure to soundscapes with varying acoustic characteristics, examining the contextual and individual factors which drive variation in the strengths of these relationships. We will examine the psychological mechanisms that underpin these relationships and investigate whether human noise reduces the benefits of natural soundscapes. We will also relate spatial patterns in soundscape characteristics to indicators of mental well-being and antidepressant prescriptions rates, and quantify people's willingness to pay for improvements in natural soundscape quality. Taken together, these advances will allow us to measure, monitor and predict temporal and spatial patterns in natural soundscape stocks and the flows of derived benefits.