Key Points

• The science is clear: If you want to live longer, surround yourself with nature.
• A new and powerful tool allows users to quickly determine the relative amount of nature around their location: a NatureScore®.
• NatureQuant’s proprietary NatureScore® merges aerial imagery analysis, satellite infrared measurements, land and vegetation databases, computer vision, and map and GIS parsing tools to deliver a single comprehensive nature measurement score. Additionally, the NatureScore® considers built environmental pollutions, like air quality, noise pollution, “urban heat islands,” and light pollution.
• The elements in the NatureScore® were blended via an iterative machine-learning system to optimize positive health outcomes. As detailed below, the NatureScore techniques yielded powerful positive associations with longevity; it also yielded negative associations with poor health outcomes, including cancer, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease.

Health

Is science’s newest miracle drug access to nature? A large and growing body of scientific literature demonstrates that contact with nature (broadly defined to include green space, trees, parks, forests, bodies of water, and other natural landscape elements) can lead to measurable psychological and physiological health benefits. In response a rapidly growing movement of physicians are prescribing time outdoors as the best possible cure for a growing list of ailments.

Nature contact offers promise both as prevention and as treatment across the life course. Potential advantages include safety, practicality, and easy, low-cost access compared to conventional medical interventions. Few medications or other interventions can boast these attributes.

Consistent with these findings, a widespread, systematic, and evidence-based movement is now underway. The idea that a primary-care physician, psychiatrist, psychologist, or cardiologist might prescribe a park before a pill is new and disruptive. A company telling its employees to find greenspace for mental health is not yet standard, but the practice is growing. Insurance companies offering a reduction in premiums if an insured spends five hours a month outside is unconventional, but it is on the way. We are at a tipping point. Health experts, researchers, and government officials are now proposing widespread changes aimed at increasing the nature in people’s everyday lives and surroundings.

Why do people with access to more green spaces live longer? There are many possibilities, and perhaps the answer is many forces working in concert. Just looking at plants is known to lower stress, which decreases damaging cortisol in our blood. Touching plants might impact the microbiome on our skin and strengthen our immune system. There’s also the benefit of air quality: A single tree produces enough oxygen for four people to breathe. Plants may mitigate the spread of diseases. Greenery helps cool the urban island heat effect, making some areas of cities cooler and more comfortable than others. Nature may also simply be a meaningful marker for a lack of man-made hazards. Humans were immersed in nature for 99% of our history; our modern, largely indoor and urban lives influence our biology and psychology in ways we are just beginning to understand.

A new technology can deliver a NatureScore® for any location in the United States. The scoring system, developed through an artificial intelligence process, blends a number of nature measurement inputs to optimize health benefits. As shown below, the NatureScore® techniques yielded powerful positive associations with longevity and negative associations with poor health outcomes (e.g., cancer, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease). In short, living in an area with a high NatureScore® is strongly associated with enjoying a longer, healthier life.

How should one act on this information? A simple recommendation could be to move to an area with more green. But urban planners, architects, and homeowners should all endeavor to increase and support more green-ness around our homes and workplaces.

NatureQuant is conducting research into ways to optimize green space to boost these demonstrable health benefits. For instance, perhaps some plants do provide more longevity than others? Maybe sidewalk trees are more important than park space? How important are natural water features? Right now, we are just starting to put the pieces together, but we do know this: you should get as much nature exposure as you can. Your health depends on it.