We investigated the impact of viewing versus not viewing a real forest on human subjects’ physiological and psychological responses in the same setting. Fifteen healthy volunteers (11 males, four females, mean age 36 years) participated. Each participant was asked to view a forest while seated in a comfortable chair for 15 min (Forest condition) vs. sitting the same length of time with a curtain obscuring the forest view (Enclosed condition). Both conditions significantly decreased blood pressure (BP) variables, i.e., systolic BP, diastolic BP, and mean arterial pressure between pre and post experimental stimuli, but these reductions showed no difference between conditions. Interestingly, the Forest viewing reduced cerebral oxygenated hemoglobin (HbO₂) assessed by near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) and improved the subjects’ Profile of Mood States (POMS) scores, whereas the Enclosed condition increased the HbO₂ and did not affect the POMS scores. There were no significant differences in saliva amylase or heart rate variability (HRV) between the two conditions. Collectively, these results suggest that viewing a real forest may have a positive effect on cerebral activity and psychological responses. However, both viewing and not viewing the forest had similar effects on cardiovascular responses such as BP variables and HRV.

We investigated the influence of forest management on landscape appreciation and psychological restoration in on-site settings by exposing respondents to an unmanaged, dense coniferous (crowding) forest and a managed (thinned) coniferous forest; we set the two experimental settings in the forests of the Fuji Iyashinomoroi Woodland Study Center. The respondents were individually exposed to both settings while sitting for 15 min and were required to answer three questionnaires to analyze the psychological restorative effects before and after the experiment (feeling (the Profile of Mood States), affect (the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule), and subjective restorativeness (the Restorative Outcome Scale). To compare landscape appreciation, they were required to answer another two questionnaires only after the experiment, for scene appreciation (the semantic differential scale) and for the restorative properties of each environment (the Perceived Restorativeness Scale). Finally, we obtained these findings: (1) the respondents evaluated each forest environment highly differently and evaluated the thinned forest setting more positively; (2) the respondents’ impressions of the two physical environments did not appear to be accurately reflected in their evaluations; (3) forest environments have potential restorative effects whether or not they are managed, but these effects can be partially enhanced by managing the forests.

We have developed a system that streams and archives live sound from remote areas across Japan via an unmanned automatic camera. The system was used to carry out pilot bird censuses in woodland; this allowed us to examine the use of live sound transmission and the role of social media as a mediator in remote scientific monitoring. The system has been streaming sounds 8 h per day for more than five years. We demonstrated that: (1) the transmission of live sound from a remote woodland could be used effectively to monitor birds in a remote location; (2) the simultaneous involvement of several participants via Internet Relay Chat to listen to live sound transmissions could enhance the accuracy of census data collection; and (3) interactions through Twitter allowed members of the public to engage or help with the remote monitoring of birds and experience inaccessible nature through the use of novel technologies.

Ecocentric education programs should include a method for the in-depth understanding of multi-scale ecological time concepts. To accomplish this, the common restriction that ecocentric education should pertain only to realistic nature may have to be removed. The purpose of this research was to confirm the validity of a program featuring phenology observation, employing fixed-point time-lapse images as climate change learning, and to obtain suggestions on the influence of the program on the multi-timescale concepts of the learners. An observation sheet listing images of cherry flowering from 16 April to 15 March each year from 1996 to 2017 was created, and the 50-min educational program using the observation sheet was conducted with 189 third year junior high school students. The tendencies among students’ answers to the two questions before and after the program suggest that the program contributed to the students acquiring the hundreds-year timescale concept based on the short-term timescale concept of dynamic nature. The contribution of this research is to visualize long-term and multi-scale ecological time concepts. By combining long-term time-lapse images with everyday nature experiences, the possibility of expanding such emotions as wonder and attachment to nature towards a long-term ecological timescale is achieved.

For environmental education about climate change issues, selecting events that are already encountered by people as teaching materials is considered effective. Consideration of changes in leafing dates over time provides a useful tool, in particular when children themselves observe plant phenology, which can be achieved using time-lapse imagery. We postulated that creating an environment where this process can be conducted at school would give children a readiness of behavior toward resolution of climate change issues. Verification of how adequately children can undertake the observations is key to establishing the methodology’s effectiveness. In this research, we used time-lapse images from Shiga Heights, Nagano prefecture, Japan, that were taken once per day from 1987 to 2004; in each year from this series, we used the images taken from 27 May to 15 June, inclusive, as these were the dates during which leafing was expected. We created observation sheets and made these and the time-lapse images available for students on the Internet. As a result of our analysis of observations made by 543 students using the observation sheets, we determined that the method had sufficient adequacy for education.