As mental health issues increase worldwide, nature-based experiences are being recognized as alternative treatments for improving health and well-being. Increasing urbanization precludes many people from accessing green spaces owing to time or physical limitations. Therefore, opportunities to connect with nature through virtual technology is being encouraged. We conducted a systematic review of studies on the psychological effects of experiencing nature using virtual technology. We searched the academic databases PubMed, Web of Science, and Scopus for relevant studies and assessed their quality using Cochrane’s RoB 2 and ROBINS-I tools. Twenty-one studies were included and the psychological outcomes were negatively synthesized by the intervention characteristics (duration, observation position of the landscape, interaction, environment description, and sensory type). Psychological outcomes were classified into emotional recovery, cognitive recovery, stress reduction, and other indicators. Emotional recovery was most consistently presented, and virtual natural contact alleviated negative emotions more than it elicited positive emotions. Additionally, virtual nature interventions lasting more than 10 min showed more consistent effects than those of less than 10 min. Moreover, an open field of view led to significant emotional recovery and an in-forest view led to significant cognitive recovery. Despite some limitations, our findings will contribute to the development of virtual forest experiences to improve human well-being.

This study aimed to analyze the effectiveness of reality technology programs in forest education by systematically reviewing prior studies that have verified the effectiveness of reality technology-aided forest education content. Additionally, we checked the current status of reality technology content-based forest-related education. We searched for data on forest education using reality technology published until November 2022 in both domestic and foreign web-based academic databases. In total, 117 research papers were identified, and 13 were selected based on the data selection criteria. After systematic analysis, we inferred the following: First, most reality technology-based forest education programs use augmented reality (AR); the software is customized and developed for mobile devices because AR is effective in two-way communication owing to the nature of the technology. Second, forest education showed greater cognitive and affective effects when reality technology was used (cognitive effect: 71.4%; affective effect: 63%) than when it was not used. Third, forest education using reality technology produced more than 90% cognitive and affective effects (cognitive effect: 90%; affective effect: 100%). Therefore, forest education using realistic technology can have a positive effect indoors. Although these results are difficult to generalize, they can be used as basic data for future research on reality technology-based forest education.

Since 1970s, South Korea has been developed rapidly in the aspects of economy and industry over 40 years due to the Economic Development Plans led by the Korean government. Consequently, urbanization has been accelerated and the population then began to be flowed into major cities. In result, many parts of forestland in South Korea have been changed into urban areas by urban expansion and population migration under forestland conversion permission by South Korean Forestland Management Law. However, such permission standards cannot help being friendly to the development due to the line of national policy, and so several environmental problems, i.e., topographical and ecological changes, have been caused over couple of decades. In this study, therefore, we suggested new enhanced permission standards in terms of topographical and ecological protection in converted forestland. In Mountainous Districts Management Act of Korea Forest Service, slope and elevation criteria have been operated to regulate the indiscriminate use of risky land parcels when forestland is converted to other land use types. However, it is impossible to consider topographical variation with only such two indices in the land parcel because the indices values are averaged in each target parcel. Therefore, for supplementing insufficient criteria, the slope gradient by Catena was suggested by converted land use types. Furthermore, the ecological indices and criteria such as stand age, Diameter at Breast Height (DBH) and soil depth were considered in this study according to the forestland-watershed and –use types on converted target parcel. Firstly, we suggested flexible degree criteria by 14 land development types as topographical standards for forestland conversion. Secondly, the ratio of ‘risky slope’ below 40% in a target forestland parcel was defined to decrease the risk of disasters such as landslides. Thirdly, standard of ecological condition were proposed as ecological score by integrating stand age, DBH and soil depth classes in the target forestland parcels by 5 forestland-watershed and 14 land use types. As a result, we could prepare acceptable standards in South Korean that can reduce topographical and ecological damages by converting other land use type.