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Despite growing recognition of nature's impact on mental health, its specific effects on adolescents remain unclear. This gap hinders effective strategies for youth well-being in a world facing increasing environmental pressures. This study directly investigates the connections between coastal environments and subjective well-being in adolescents. We explore how interactions with coastal landscapes and associated cultural ecosystem services contribute to both personal and social dimensions of well-being in a sample of 202 adolescents (16 and 17 years old) from Sardinia, Italy. Our findings reveal a beneficial impact of coastal experiences, promoting positive affect, social integration, and physiological well-being. However, human pressures on these environments can lead to negative affect, while fostering a sense of social contribution. This research highlights the complex interplay between coastal environments, human impacts, and teenagers' well-being. Understanding these links empowers planners to craft coastal management strategies that balance adolescents' well-being with the long-term sustainability of coastal regions.

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This study identified the most common poisonous and allergenic plants occurring in Sicilian gardens and parks. Based on a survey conducted at 100 sites, a list was drawn up that reports the main biological and toxicological characteristics and ornamental uses of these plants. A total of 137 taxa were recorded, of which 108 were poisonous and 32 were allergenic. The most represented families were the Solanaceae, Moraceae, Apocynaceae and Fabaceae. The most represented geographical contingents were the European and the Mediterranean. A large number of toxic and allergenic plants recorded in Sicilian parks and gardens cause gastrointestinal disorders, 21 of which are deadly poisonous. Based on the results, actions for the management of existing gardens and the construction of new ones are discussed. The importance of environmental education for the population starting from school age is stressed. These recommendations aim to preserve cultivated biodiversity and, at the same time, protect human and pet health.

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Because the functions of the subsurface are hidden from view, its important role in society is often ignored or taken for granted. The subsurface is, however, an essential part of the global ecosystem with important contributions to human well-being. Geodiversity is an important characteristic in this respect. Material supply is the more obvious role of the subsurface with projections of a doubling of global material use in 2060 as compared to 2017. Moreover, creating underground spaces and infrastructure are gaining importance in the urban environment. The main reason for the inadequate protection of geodiversity is the lack of a comprehensive and integrative framework. Linking socio-economic activities to biophysical system characteristics of the subsurface is facilitated by the geosystem services approach. Sustainable urban development strategies require including geodiversity in decision-making on human well-being and setting conditions for land use change. Spatial plans and decisions on the use of natural endowments should look at processes over much longer timeframes. In this paper, we explore the links between human well-being and the subsurface with an emphasis on the role of geodiversity. We set out a methodological framework and describe possible long term three-dimensional land use planning consequences for sustainable utilization of the subsurface. This article is part of the Theo Murphy meeting issue 'Geodiversity for science and society'.

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It is widely acknowledged that biodiversity change is affecting human well-being by altering the supply of Nature's Contributions to People (NCP). Nevertheless, the role of individual species in this relationship remains obscure. In this article, we present a framework that combines the cascade model from ecosystem services research with network theory from community ecology. This allows us to quantitatively link NCP demanded by people to the networks of interacting species that underpin them. We show that this "network cascade" framework can reveal the number, identity and importance of the individual species that drive NCP and of the environmental conditions that support them. This information is highly valuable in demonstrating the importance of biodiversity in supporting human well-being and can help inform the management of biodiversity in social-ecological systems.

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Ecosystem services (ES) embrace contributions of nature to human livelihood and well-being. Reef environments provide a range of ES with direct and indirect contributions to people. However, the health of reef environments is declining globally due to local and large-scale threats, affecting ES delivery in different ways. Mapping scientific knowledge and identifying research gaps on reefs' ES is critical to guide their management and conservation. We conducted a systematic assessment of peer-reviewed articles published between 2007 and 2022 to build an overview of ES research on reef environments. We analyzed the geographical distribution, reef types, approaches used to assess ES, and the potential drivers of change in ES delivery reported across these studies. Based on 115 articles, our results revealed that coral and oyster reefs are the most studied reef ecosystems. Cultural ES (e.g., subcategories recreation and tourism) was the most studied ES in high-income countries, while regulating and maintenance ES (e.g., subcategory life cycle maintenance) prevailed in low and middle-income countries. Research efforts on reef ES are biased toward the Global North, mainly North America and Oceania. Studies predominantly used observational approaches to assess ES, with a marked increase in the number of studies using statistical modeling during 2021 and 2022. The scale of studies was mostly local and regional, and the studies addressed mainly one or two subcategories of reefs' ES. Overexploitation, reef degradation, and pollution were the most commonly cited drivers affecting the delivery of provisioning, regulating and maintenance, and cultural ES. With increasing threats to reef environments, the growing demand for assessing the contributions to humans provided by reefs will benefit the projections on how these ES will be impacted by anthropogenic pressures. The incorporation of multiple and synergistic ecosystem mechanisms is paramount to providing a comprehensive ES assessment, and improving the understanding of functions, services, and benefits.

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BACKGROUND: The utilization of short-term natural exposure as a health intervention has great potential in the field of public health. However, previous studies have mostly focused on outdoor urban green spaces, with limited research on indoor biophilic environments, and the physiological regulatory mechanisms involved remain unclear. OBJECTIVES: To explore the affective and physiological impact of short-term exposure to indoor biophilic environments and their potential regulatory mechanisms. METHODS: A between-group design experiment was conducted, and the psychophysiological responses of participants to the indoor plants (Vicks Plant) were measured by a method combined the subjective survey, electrophysiological measurements, and salivary biochemical analysis. Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) from plants were also detected to analyze the main substances that caused olfactory stimuli. RESULTS: Compared with the non-biophilic environment, short-term exposure to the indoor biophilic environment was associated with psychological and physiological relaxation, including reduced negative emotions, improved positive emotions, lower heart rate, skin conductance level, salivary cortisol and pro-inflammatory cytokines, and increased alpha brainwave power. Salivary metabolomics analysis revealed that the differential metabolites observed between the groups exhibited enrichment in two metabolic pathways related to neural function and immune response: phenylalanine, tyrosine and tryptophan biosynthesis, and ubiquinone and other terpenoid-quinone biosynthesis. These changes may be associated with the combined visual and olfactory stimuli of the biophilic environment, in which D-limonene was the dominant substance in plant-derived VOCs. CONCLUSION: This research demonstrated the benefits of short-term exposure to indoor biophilic environments on psychophysiological health through evidence from both the nervous and endocrine systems.

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Ecosystem services (ESs) play vital roles in meeting the needs of human well-being and supporting sustainable development. However, there is limited research on how the types, amounts, interactions, and changes of the ESs collectively impact human well-being under the context of sustainable development goals (SDGs) of the United Nations. This study selected Qinghai Province of China as the study area and intended to make such an attempt to fill this gap in terms of the following aspects: (1) analyzing the spatial patterns and changing trends of ten ESs (food supply, water supply, carbon sink, soil retention, sand fixation, hydrological regulation, flood mitigation，cultural service，net primary productivity, and habitat quality) in Qinghai Province from 2000 to 2018; (2)constructing a multi-level index system of human well-being under the framework of the SDGs, and setting the criteria to assess the level of local human well-being; and (3) building a structural equation model to explore the direct and indirect impacts of the types, amounts, interactions and changes of the ESs on actual human well-being and the gaps between actual and targeted human well-being. The findings revealed that: (1) most of the ecosystem services fluctuated with significant downward or upward trends during 2000-2018, except for four ESs (i.e., carbon sink, soil retention, flood mitigation, and habitat quality); (2) only a few indicators of local residents' well-being such as meat production, milk production, the numbers of medical technical personnel in hospitals and health centers, and the numbers of scientific and technical personnel met the SDG criteria in most time, while other indicators remained at low levels and there were large gaps between them and the SDG criteria; (3) actual human well-being and the gaps between actual and targeted human well-being were affected by the types, amounts, interactions and changes of the ESs with different degrees directly or indirectly. The approaches and results in this study are instructive for other regions of the world to make certain the roles of ESs in promoting human well-being and substantiating the SDGs.

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Faced with the need for isolation of most people to reduce the transmission of COVID-19, a great concern for the well-being of the population has resurfaced. Considering the numerous benefits of outdoor activities to human health and well-being, we assessed whether the quality of the experience of recreational divers in a marine protected area (MPA) was impacted during the pandemic. We applied a semi-structured questionnaire to divers, collected their socioeconomic profile, preferences, motivations, experiences, and compared the results with those obtained in the previous season. We found that the quality of the recreational diver's experience remained high even during one of the world's biggest health crises. This suggests that the combination of contact with a preserved environment and the adaptation of regulations in favor of visitor safety was enough to stimulate positive experiences. Therefore, we highlight the importance of investing in adaptive management so that MPAs continue to promote ecosystem services such as human health and subjective well-being. Management implications: •Quality of experience for recreational divers remained high and was unaffected after the first major wave of COVID-19 cases.•Through adaptive tourism management, MPAs can promote positive experiences even in challenging contexts.•High impact of environmental attributes on the quality of divers' experience reinforces that threats to ecosystems are social impacts.•Socially unequal access to benefits generated by MPAs may negatively influence population's support for these areas.•Efforts are needed to strengthen the equity of distribution of positive social impacts in MPAs.•Potential to provide positive experiences for users must be seen beyond economic value, but as an investment in the population's subjective well-being.

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Human well-being is the top priority of all nations in the twenty-first century. However, depletion of natural resources and financial risk can negatively impact human well-being, which in turn can make it difficult to realize human well-being. Also, green innovation and economic globalization may play a significant role in human well-being. In this context, this study assesses the impacts of natural resources, financial risk, green innovation, and economic globalization on human well-being in emerging countries from 1990 to 2018. The empirical results from the Common Correlated Effects Mean Group estimator unveiled that natural resources and financial risk negatively affect the human well-being of emerging nations. Furthermore, the results show that green innovation and economic globalization positively contribute to human well-being. These findings are also verified using alternative methods. In addition, natural resources, financial risk, and economic globalization Granger cause human well-being but not the other way round. Furthermore, bidirectional causality exists between green innovation and human well-being. Considering these novel findings, sustainable utilization of natural resources and controlling financial risk are necessary strategies for realizing human well-being. More resources should be allocated for green innovation, and government should encourage economic globalization to attain sustainable development in emerging countries.

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In this review we highlight the relevance of biodiversity that inhabit coastal lagoons, emphasizing how species functions foster processes and services associated with this ecosystem. We identified 26 ecosystem services underpinned by ecological functions performed by bacteria and other microbial organisms, zooplankton, polychaetae worms, mollusks, macro-crustaceans, fishes, birds, and aquatic mammals. These groups present high functional redundancy but perform complementary functions that result in distinct ecosystem processes. Because coastal lagoons are located in the interface between freshwater, marine and terrestrial ecosystems, the ecosystem services provided by the biodiversity surpass the lagoon itself and benefit society in a wider spatial and historical context. The species loss in coastal lagoons due to multiple human-driven impacts affects the ecosystem functioning, influencing negatively the provision of all categories of services (i.e., supporting, regulating, provisioning and cultural). Because animals' assemblages have unequal spatial and temporal distribution in coastal lagoons, it is necessary to adopt ecosystem-level management plans to protect habitat heterogeneity and its biodiversity, ensuring the provision of services for human well-being to multi-actors in the coastal zone.

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This study aimed to investigate the impact of changing environmental conditions on MMI ES in seagrasses and mangroves. We used data from satellite and biodiversity platforms combined with field data to explore the links between ecosystem pressures (habitat conversion, overexploitation, climate change), conditions (environmental quality, ecosystem attributes), and MMI ES (provisioning, regulation, cultural). Both seagrass and mangrove extents increased significantly since 2016. While sea surface temperature showed no significant annual variation, sea surface partial pressure CO2, height above sea level and pH presented significant changes. Among the environmental quality variables only silicate, PO4 and phytoplankton showed significant annual varying trends. The MMI food provisioning increased significantly, indicating overexploitation that needs urgent attention. MMI regulation and cultural ES did not show significant trends overtime. Our results show that MMI ES are affected by multiple factors and their interactions can be complex and non-linear. We identified key research gaps and suggested future directions for research. We also provided relevant data that can support future ES assessments.

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Studies of the ecosystem services (ES) and human wellbeing (HWB) relationship have proliferated in recent decades, but few have examined how ES affect HWB over time in a region (i.e., the temporal ES-HWB relationship) and how this relationship varies between regions. Thus, this study was intended to address these questions using data from Inner Mongolia. We first quantified multiple indicators of ES and objective HWB from 1978 to 2019, and then quantified their temporal relationship with correlation analysis over the entire duration and during four development periods, respectively. Our results showed that, depending on the time periods of analysis, geographic locations, and indicators, the temporal ES-HWB relationship varied substantially in both correlation strength and directionality (r values ranged from -0.93 to +1). Specifically, food-related provisioning services and cultural services often showed significant positive relationships with income, consumption, and basic living needs (r values ranged from +0.43 to +1), but erratic relationships with equity, employment, and social relationships (r values ranged from -0.93 to +0.96). Also, the positive correlations between food-related provisioning services and HWB were generally weaker in the urbanized regions. Cultural services and HWB were more strongly correlated in later development periods, whereas the relationship between regulating services and HWB was quite variable in space and time. The variations in the relationship over different development periods may be attributable to changing environmental and socioeconomic conditions, while the variations between regions were likely due to spatial heterogeneity of influencing factors. Our findings have an important policy implication for Inner Mongolia and beyond: sustainable management based on the ES and HWB relationship must be temporally adaptive and spatially tailored.

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There has been a longstanding debate about the impact of international trade on the environment and human well-being, yet there is little known about such environment and human well-being trade-off. Here, we explore the effect of international trade on the carbon intensity of human well-being (CIWB) globally under the current global trade system and a hypothetical no-trade scenario. We found that between 1995 and 2015, CIWB of 41% of countries declined and 59% of countries increased, caused by international trade, and this resulted in a reduction of the global CIWB and a decline in CIWB inequality between countries. International trade decreased CIWB for high- and upper-middle-income countries and increased CIWB for lower- and middle-income countries. In addition, our results also show that decreases in emission intensity are the most important driver of lower CIWB and the percentage contribution of emission intensity to the improvement in CIWB increases with income. The reduction of emission intensity, population growth, and increase in life expectancy all contribute to CIWB reduction, while the consumption level is the primary factor driving CIWB growth. Our results underscore the importance of studying the impact of international trade on the CIWB of countries at different stages of development.

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It is very important to seek a sustainable improvement in human well-being under a limited resource supply and to promote the scientific and coordinated development of urban economic development, ecological environment protection, and human well-being. This paper constructs a human well-being index that includes economic well-being, culture and education well-being, and social development well-being as factors, and it incorporates the human well-being index into the evaluation system for urban well-being energy eco-efficiency (WEE). It uses the super-slack-based measure (SBM) model, which considers undesirable output, to measure the WEE of 10 prefecture-level cities in Shaanxi Province, China, from 2005 to 2019. The social network analysis (SNA) is used to describe the characteristics of the spatial correlation network of WEE and its spatiotemporal evolutionary trend, and the quadratic assignment procedure (QAP) analysis method is used to identify the driving factors that affect the spatial correlation network. The results show that, first, the WEE in Shaanxi is relatively low as a whole and varies greatly among regions, with the highest level in northern Shaanxi, followed by Guanzhong; the lowest level is in southern Shaanxi. Second, in Shaanxi, WEE has transcended geographical proximity into a complex, multi-threaded spatial correlation network, and Yulin is at the center of the network. Third, the network shows four sectors: the net overflow, main benefit, two-way overflow, and broker. Members in each sector have not fully exploited their advantages, and the whole network can be improved. Fourth, the differences in the economic development level, openness, industrial structure, and population are the main driving factors influencing the formation of the spatial correlation network.

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Synergistically maintain or enhance the numerous beneficial contributions of nature to the quality of human life is an important but challenging question for achieving Sustainable Development Goals. However, the spatiotemporal distributions of global nature's contributions to people (NCPs) and their interactions remain unclear. We built a rapid assessment indicator framework and produced the first spatially explicit assessment of all 18 NCPs at a global scale. The 18 global NCPs in 1992 and 2018 were globally assessed in 15,204 subbasins based on two spatial indicator dimensions, including nature's potential contribution and the actual contribution to people. The results show that most of the high NCP values are highly localized. From 1992 to 2018, 6 regulating NCPs, 3 material NCPs, and 2 nonmaterial NCPs declined; 29 regulating-material NCP combinations (54 in total) dominated 76% of the terrestrial area, and the area with few NCPs accounted for 22%; and synergistic relationships were more common than tradeoff relationships, while the relationships among regulating and material NCPs generally traded-off with each other. Transitional climate areas contained few NCPs and have strong tradeoff relationships. However, the high synergistic relationship among NCPs in low latitudes could be threatened by future climate change. These findings provide a general spatiotemporal understanding of global NCP distributions and can be used to interpret the biogeographic information in a functional way to support regional coordination and achieve landscape multifunctionality for the enhancement of human well-being.

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China's economy has been experiencing a new development mode that emphasizes an environmentally friendly green economy and high living standards. The concept of human well-being has become increasingly prominent in recent years to replace GDP per capita as an important indicator for evaluating happiness. In the context of the green economy, it is of great significance to incorporate environmental indicators for evaluating human well-being. To this end, this paper constructs a new human well-being evaluation indicator system including environmental sustainability, and then evaluates the well-being levels of 30 provinces in China from 2011 to 2020 using a comprehensive evaluation method. Then, various statistical methods and visualization methods are used to deeply analyze the spatiotemporal changes in the well-being scores of Chinese provinces during the sample period. Finally, the spatial convergence model was used to verify if cross-province well-being scores would converge to a common steady state. The findings are as follows. (1) The scores of the environmental sustainability subsystem greatly vary from province to province. This is because the local governments have attached great importance to the construction of green ecological civilization in recent years, thus increasing the investment in protecting the ecological environment. (2) From temporal dimensions, overall human well-being scores of 30 provinces slightly increased year after year. In geography, eastern provinces have the highest human well-being scores, followed by northeast, northwest, and southwest provinces. (3) In terms of the scores of the four subsystems, we find that nearly all provinces have their advantages and disadvantages. (4) From the results of the spatial convergence models, both absolute and conditional ß convergence have been verified, indicating that the human well-being of all provinces will converge to the common steady state in the future.

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The current paper concentrates on whether geopolitical risk can create environmental stress or not. It empirically explores the geopolitical risk effect on energy and carbon intensities of human well-being. Our paper postulates that geopolitical risk's impacts change over time because of the continuous amendments in the decision process through the geopolitical events' reoccurrence and the interaction with unobserved variables or the time-specific disturbances. Thus, our paper uses the two-way fixed Prais-Winsten regression approach to measure this dynamic relationship period yearly. It extracts evidence from 18 countries worldwide during the period (1992-2018). It finds that the effect of geopolitical risk on environmental stress is changing between positive and negative signs. The results show that geopolitical risk is biased toward reducing environmental stress or supporting environmental sustainability. From a policy implication side, policymakers and scholars should pay more attention to understand how geopolitical risk effects evolve on the country and the international levels and how to manage the geopolitical events to encourage their positive impacts on the environment.

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Environmental degradation continues to attract interest from academics, policymakers, and other stakeholders. However, empirical studies have been limited in the choice of human well-being indicators. Therefore, this study extends the literature by broadening the nexus between human well-being and environmental degradation in 29 African countries from 1970 to 2019. Preliminary tests adaptable to effects of cross-sectional dependency and heterogeneity in panel dataset were adopted, alongside the cross-sectional auto-regressive distributed lag model. Findings from the study showed that the adopted human well-being indicators such as globalisation, life expectancy, and human capital development were environmentally enhancing both in the short and long terms. In contrast, income growth was environmentally degrading in the short and long terms. At the same time, urbanisation was only environmentally detrimental in the long term with no significant short-term effect. Natural resource rent which served as a control variable was environmentally degrading both in the short and long terms. Consequently, this study confirms the synergy approach between the environment and human well-being and the trade-off hypothesis in African countries. Thus, African countries' general resource management policy significantly determines the impact their path to human well-being enhancement has on the environment.

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Recovery plans in Europe in the COVID-19 pandemic era have stimulated construction-led development, which has eclipsed nature-based agendas in terms of scale, size, and policy. One estimate is that only 0.3% of spending on urban infrastructure globally is directed towards various nature-based solutions and other ecosystem efforts supporting human well-being. In the future we will urgently need to employ nature-based approaches in crisis management for the power and potential of nature to be fully employed in pursuit of urban recovery. We strongly recommend that nature-based approaches be an explicit requirement to secure funding for future recovery plans.

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Interior design (ID) pedagogy should include theories and applications, which advance human health and wellness in the built environment. Design for wellness and well-being is referenced in 5 of the 13 Council for Interior Design Accreditation (CIDA) knowledge application standards. This focus on wellness was amplified during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic experience, which elevated our collective understanding of contagions, disease transmission, sanitation practices, vaccination efficacy, and immunity, as well as the devastating turmoil-social, economic, and psychological-of the pandemic's tragic spread. Thus, the purpose of this study was to examine ID educators' attitudes, intentions, and behaviors related to teaching wellness and to determine if the pandemic impacted wellness pedagogy. For this mixed methods study, we employed an online survey (n = 86) followed by participant interviews (n = 11). Data from the questionnaire and interviews suggested that peer attitudes toward wellness were a significant factor that influenced teaching behavior. Teaching intentions were predicted by prior teaching, attitudes, and perceived behavioral control (ability to teach wellness). Although experience with the pandemic was not a predictor of teaching behavior, it did surface as a strong motivator for future teaching adjustments. Findings also showed wide-ranging understandings and definitions of wellness-related themes. Implications for design programs seeking to equip faculty with the tools needed to integrate wellness more deeply into ID curricula are discussed.