Houlden, V, Jani, A and Hong, A (2021) Is biodiversity of greenspace important for human health and wellbeing? A bibliometric analysis and systematic literature review. Urban Forestry & Urban Greening, 66. 127385. ISSN 1618-8667
Abstract
Global urbanisation has consequences for human health and relationships with the natural environment. While urban greenspaces are theorised to support health and wellbeing, the role of biodiversity as a mechanism supporting this process is yet to be fully quantified. This review aimed to evaluate existing evidence for a relationship between biodiversity of greenspace and human health and wellbeing, including both self-reported and clinical outcomes. We conducted a systematic database search, thorough article screening and quality assessment, conducting a review of five previous reviews and narrative synthesis of the ten recent studies meeting our inclusion criteria. We also performed a bibliometric analysis of 1,758 studies to chart geographical and temporal trends on the topic. Results revealed that few reviews have holistically analysed the evidence for a relationship between biodiversity in greenspaces and human health directly, finding mixed, or weak evidence for a relationship between biodiversity and various aspects of physical and mental health. Our narrative review discovered evidence supporting associations between health and floral biodiversity, particularly subjective wellbeing and self-reported health, with mixed evidence for other health outcomes or more holistic measures of biodiversity. Consistently defined terminology and integrated methods are required for further research to understand long-term health impacts of exposure to biodiversity through larger-scale longitudinal and controlled case-studies.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2021 The Authors. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0) (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) |
Keywords: | Biodiversity; Greenspace; Health; Nature; Wellbeing |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Environment (Leeds) > School of Geography (Leeds) > Centre for Spatial Analysis & Policy (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 19 Nov 2021 15:21 |
Last Modified: | 25 Jun 2023 22:48 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Elsevier |
Identification Number: | 10.1016/j.ufug.2021.127385 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:180000 |