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

人们越来越认识到花时间在大自然中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方案，以治疗心理健康问题，并通过与大自然接触来支持心理健康。2019冠状病毒病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不利影响，也体现在这一时期人们普遍认识到与自然接触的好处。来自大自然的健康和福祉效益是全球重要的文化生态系统服务（CES）。然而，虽然我们知道可用自然空间的数量会影响这些消费电子展，但这些空间质量的重要性在很大程度上仍然未知。我们对生物多样性的不同要素在推动自然-健康关系中所起的作用和影响的理解也很有限。这些知识差距限制了将这些生态系统服务系统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色空间管理中。声音在我们的自然体验中扮演着关键的角色，尤其是鸟儿的歌声，为我们在户外度过的时光提供了配乐。的确，从沃恩·威廉的《云雀高飞》到雷切尔·卡森的《寂静的春天》，鸟类的歌声一直是我们与自然关系和环境质量评估的决定性组成部分。这些原声或自然声景的声学特性可以很容易地测量出来。鸟类经常被用作更广泛的生物多样性的指标，鸟类群落的组成受到许多因素的驱动，例如栖息地的可用性和景观结构，这些因素也被认为会影响自然体验的质量。因此，鸟类提供的声景观声学特征可以更普遍地反映景观生物多样性的状况。因此，声景有潜力通过自然参与提供生物多样性对心理健康和福祉的贡献的客观衡量，并使这些生态系统服务框架以及自然资本政策和管理决策能够更充分地纳入这些生态系统服务框架。在这个项目中，我们的学术研究团队和来自保护、心理健康、工业、规划和政策领域的主要利益相关者将对景观结构、声景观复杂性、声景观质量感知、衍生的心理健康和福祉效益以及实现这一目标所需的经济价值之间的联系途径进行机制理解。我们将采用一种新颖的方法，将鸟类监测数据与单个物种的现有记录结合起来，在英国各地构建模拟的自然音景，并将其声学特性与当地栖息地和景观特征联系起来，而不是依赖于实际音景的记录。通过实验室和在线实验，我们还将探讨对不同声学特征的音景的短期反应和长期影响，并研究驱动这些关系强度变化的环境和个人因素。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声景的好处。我们还将声景特征的空间格局与心理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质量而付费的意愿。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种群的时空格局和衍生收益的流动。

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.