10 Ways Forests Make You Better (Infographic)

More than 80 percent of the U.S. population lives in urban areas, and urban natural resources are crucial to livability of cities and suburbs.

Click read more below to see some of the ways forests can help promote human wellness. Including improving attention, mental and physical health, to a decrease in respiratory issues and even violence and crime! As courtesy of the Wisconsin Dept. of Natural Resources

 1. Improve Attention
The effect of walking through a park is equal to the peak effect of two typical ADHD medications. Also, college students with natural views from their dorm windows are more likely to score higher on tests.

2. Decrease Asthma 
Trees filter airborne pollutants and reduce conditions that cause asthma and other respiratory problems.


3. Decrease Obesity
Residents of areas with the most greenery are three times as likely to be physically active and 40% less likely to be overweight than residents in the least green settings. Children in neighborhoods with more green spaces are less likely to experience an increase in BMI.

4. Improve Physical Health
Contact with nature can also help decrease blood pressure and reduce muscle tension. Workers without a view of nature from their desks are likely to claim more sick days than those who do not.

Post-surgical patients with window views of nature have shorter hospital stays, receive fewer negative evaluations and take fewer pain medications than patients in similar rooms with windows facing a brick wall.

5. Improve Mental Health
Spending time in green spaces with trees reduces stress and brain fatigue.

6. UV Protection
In 50% shade, sunburn protection lasts 2.5 times longer than when standing in direct sunlight.

7. Reduce Noise 
Tree-and-shrub buffers can reduce 50% of noise heard by the human ear.

8. Reduce Traffic Accidents
Highway drivers with views of natural roadsides display higher frustration tolerance. Landscape improvements to to urban highways and arterials can reduce collisions by as much as 46%.

9. Reduce Violence
Trees and natural landscapes in public housing reduces domestic aggression and violence as much as 25%.

10. Improve neighborhoods
In buildings with trees, residents report a stronger feeling of unity and cohesion with neighbors, feel safer and like where they are living more than residents with less trees around them. Outdoor spaces with natural landscapes have less graffiti, vandalism and littering than spaces without any greenery.

Source: Wisconsin Dept. of Natural Resources.