Studies have shown that contact with nature plays a crucial role in the amelioration of human health. Forest therapy has recently received widespread attention as a novel and subsidiary treatment approach for stress recovery and health promotion. However, there is a lack of ample research on the comprehensive evaluation of the forest healthcare benefits. Moreover, it is not entirely clear what kind of forest types and seasons are suitable for forest therapy activities and how healthcare forests should be constructed and managed. From September 2019 to January 2020 and May to August 2020., five forest types of Phyllostachys edulis forest, subtropical evergreen broad-leaved forest, Liquidambar formosana forest, Cunninghamia lanceolata forest, coniferous and broad-leaved mixed forest and a forestless control group in Shimen National Forest Park, Guangzhou City, Guangdong Province, China were selected. Variations in the character of negative air ion concentration, air oxygen content, human comfort index and phytoncide relative content were analyzed. Principal component analysis and systematic clustering were used to construct forest comprehensive healthcare index and evaluation grade in order to assess the healthcare benefits of different forest types. In terms of negative air ion concentration, the subtropical evergreen broad-leaved forest was far ahead of the other forest types throughout the year, while the forestless control group was the worst. All stands reached the annual maximum in summer, followed by spring, autumn and winter. From the perspective of air oxygen content, summer > spring > autumn > winter, among them, all forest stands clearly exceeded the normal atmospheric oxygen content (20.9%) in the first three quarters. Moreover, the air oxygen content of coniferous and broad-leaved mixed forest was the highest in five forest types; the forestless control group was the lowest. Judging from the human comfort index, in the whole year, all forest types, including the forestless group, were at the comfortable level and above. However, the five forest types still differed greatly in diverse seasons, among which Phyllostachys edulis forest and subtropical evergreen broad-leaved forest were superior to Liquidambar formosana forest, Cunninghamia lanceolata forest, coniferous and broad-leaved mixed forest in spring and summer, while it was in reverse in autumn and winter. In view of the phytoncide relative content, the subtropical evergreen broad-leaved forest was the highest, followed by the Cunninghamia lanceolata forest. The relative content of phytoncide was released more in summer, second, by spring, autumn and winter. Furthermore, establishing forest comprehensive healthcare index (FCHI = 0.1NAICi + 0.35AOCi + 0.27HCIi + 0.28PRCi), according to the FCHI value, it was divided into five rating levels. Overall, the comprehensive healthcare index of the five forest stands distinctly outperformed the forestless control group in all seasons. In addition, the five forest types were at level I in spring and summer. From the comprehensive data of the whole year, the comprehensive healthcare index of the coniferous and broad-leaved mixed forest was the best, followed by the subtropical evergreen broad-leaved forest. The forest environment has a favorable influence on the human body and mind, so it is suggested that citizens go to the forest environment regularly for healthcare and physical and mental washing. In terms of the forest healthcare benefits, the best seasons for forest therapy in Shimen National Forest Park are spring and summer; autumn is suitable as well. When planning and constructing the forest therapy bases in Shimen National Forest Park in the future, coniferous and broad-leaved mixed forests should be allocated more in the stand transformation to promote forest healthcare benefits. Protecting and developing the landscape resources of the subtropical evergreen broad-leaved forests should be paid close attention, as well as making rational use of their health activity space.

Fertilization is a fundamental aspect of global forest management that enhances forest productivity and drastically affects soil microbial communities. However, few studies have investigated the differences and similarities in the responses of below-ground microbial communities to different fertilization schemes. The effects of fertilization regimes on the composition and diversity of soil fungal and bacterial communities were investigated in a young Catalpa bungei plantation in Shandong Province, Eastern China. Soil microbial communities were assessed undergoing three types of fertilization: (i) no fertilization (CK), (ii) hole fertilization (HF), and (iii) the integration of water and fertilizer (WF). We further analyzed the effects of soil depth (i.e., 0–20 and 20–40 cm) on the structure of soil microbial communities. Our results indicated that the diversity of bacteria (e.g., Chao1 and Shannon indices) reduced undergoing fertilization, and WF had a higher negative impact on bacterial diversity than HF. A lower bacterial diversity was observed in the subsoil compared to the topsoil. In contrast to bacterial diversity, fungal diversity had a slightly increasing trend in the fertilized environments. The primary bacterial function was metabolism, which was independent of fertilization or soil depth. Among fungal functional guilds, symbiotic soil fungi decreased obviously in the fertilized stand, whereas saprotrophic fungi increased slowly. According to the structural equation models (SEM), the diversity and composition of bacterial and fungal communities were jointly regulated by soil nutrients (including N and P contents) directly affected by fertilization and soil layer. These findings could be used to develop management practices in temperate forests and help sustain soil microbial diversity to maintain long-term ecosystem function and services.

Urban residents have a higher risk of hypertension and psychological stress than rural residents. Aside from medical interventions, understanding how to control hypertension and alleviate the stress of urban populations has become a public concern. As an alternative medical measure, forest therapy has shown the effects of normalizing blood pressure (BP) and reducing stress increasingly in recent literature, but this is still inconclusive. In order to systematically verify forest therapy’s effects on the BP and mental stress of urban residents, we conducted meta-analyses to assess the changes in systolic blood pressure (SBP), diastolic blood pressure (DBP), and salivary cortisol concentration (SCC; a stress biomarker) between the forest therapy group and urban control group. We searched 4 online databases, and 21 studies on BP involving 2270 participants and 13 studies on SCC involving 1786 participants were included. Through the meta-analysis, the mean difference and confidence interval (CI) estimates indicated that forest therapy significantly reduced participants’ SBP −3.44 (95% CI −5.74, −1.14), DBP −3.07 (95% CI −5.59, −0.54), and SCC −0.07 (95% CI −0.10, −0.04), as compared with urban control. Yet, there was substantial heterogeneity (I² = 72.87–88.59%) among these studies. We also found that each prediction interval (PI) for SBP (95% PI −13.30, 6.42), DBP (95% PI −15.54, 9.41), and SCC (95% PI −0.18, 0.05) were all much wider than the CIs and contained values above 0. This means that forest therapy may reduce SBP, DBP, and SCC on average, but may not exclude adverse results. Meta-regression analyses showed that participants’ age and baseline SBP levels determined the heterogeneity among SBP studies. After forest therapy, older participants and those with higher baseline SBP levels had greater SBP-lowering effects. Among DBP studies, the primary source of heterogeneity was participants’ baseline DBP levels; participants with higher baseline DBP levels had greater DBP reduction. In subgroup analyses, we discovered that longer-term forest therapy programs (≥20 min) resulted in a greater reduction in BP and SCC than shorter-term forest therapy programs (<20 min). Additionally, seated viewing, walking, or multi-session programs in forests were observed to have similar effects on reducing BP and SCC. Despite extensive analyses, the study did not identify any sources of heterogeneity among forest therapy programs for lowering SCC levels. Overall, we conclude that forest therapy programs have beneficial therapeutic effects on urban residents’ physio-psychological health through lowering BP and relieving stress (reducing SCC). This finding provides solid evidence of the contribution of forest therapy to urban residents’ health and wellbeing.

Due to improved data collection and processing techniques, forestry surveys are now more efficient and accurate, generating large amounts of forestry data. Forestry Big Data (FBD) has become a critical component of the forestry inventory investigation system. In this study, publications on FBD were identified via the Web of Science database, and a comprehensive bibliometric analysis, network analysis, and analysis of major research streams were conducted to present an overview of the FBD field. The results show that FBD research only began nearly a decade ago but has undergone an upswing since 2016. The studies were mainly conducted by China and the US, and collaboration among authors is relatively fragmented. FBD research involved interdisciplinary integration. Among all the keywords, data acquisition (data mining and remote sensing) and data processing (machine learning and deep learning) received more attention, while FBD applications (forecasting, biodiversity, and climate change) have only recently received attention. Our research reveals that the FBD research is still in the infancy stage but has grown rapidly in recent years. Data acquisition and data processing are the main research fields, whereas FBD applications have gradually emerged and may become the next focus.