Fast Fact Library

Coastal wetlands provide significant cost avoidance during extreme storm events. A regional study across 12 affected states showed that during Hurricane Sandy in 2012, wetlands avoided $625 million in direct flood...

Narayan, Siddharth, Michael W. Beck, Paul Wilson, Christopher J. Thomas, Alexandra Guerrero, Christine C. Shepard, Borja G. Reguero, Guillermo Franco, Jane Carter Ingram, and Dania Trespalacios. “The value of coastal wetlands for flood damage reduction in the northeastern USA.” Scientific reports 7, no. 1 (2017): 9463. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-09269-z

Community gardens can increase civic engagement in nearby residents. In a survey of 5,188 people from 26 communities across the United States, respondents who had a community garden within a 10-minute walk of their...

Center for Active Design. “The Assembly Civic Engagement Survey: Key Findings and Design Implications.” (2017): 28. https://centerforactivedesign.org/assembly-civic-engagement-survey.

An in-depth analysis assessing urban tree cover and its impact on residential building energy use in the coterminous United States estimates a reduction of 38.8. million MWh or $4.7 billion in electricity use and...

Nowak, David J., Nathaniel Appleton, Alexis Ellis, and Eric Greenfield. (2017). Residential building energy conservation and avoided power plant emissions by urban and community trees in the United States. Urban Forestry & Urban Greening 21: 158-165. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ufug.2016.12.004

A review of 66 studies on the built environment and quality of life at residential health care centers found that nature-based design features like outdoor gardens provide a variety of positive outcomes including...

Joseph, Anjali, Young-Seon Choi, and Xiaobo Quan. “Impact of the Physical Environment of Residential Health, Care and Support Facilities (RHCSF) on Staff and Residents:  A Systematic Review of the Literature.” Environment and Behavior, 48.10 (December 2016) 1203-1241. https://doi.org/10.1177/0013916515597027

A study of tree cover in and around the California residences of 7,910 participants suggests that increased tree cover in a neighborhood is related to better overall health, particularly lower rates of obesity and...

Ulmer, Jared M, Kathleen L. Wolf, Desiree R. Backman, Raymond L. Tretheway, Cynthia JA Blain, Jarlath PM O’Neil-Dunne, and Lawrence D. Frank. (November 2016). Multiple health benefits of urban tree canopy: The mounting evidence for a green prescription. Health & Place 42: 54-62. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.healthplace.2016.08.011

A global meta-analysis of 221 landscapes found that forest restoration enhanced biodiversity by 15-84% and vegetation structure by 36-77% as compared to degraded ecosystems. While restoration did not fully recover...

Crouzeilles, Renato, Michael Curran, Mariana S. Ferreira, David B. Lindenmayer, Carlos E. V. Grelle, and José M. Rey Benayas. A global meta-analysis on the ecological drivers of forest restoration success. Nature Communications 7, 11666 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms11666

Researchers found that exposure to live plants, nature views, and the color green can increase students’ visual creativity in a classroom setting. Students’ visual creativity as determined by impartial judges was...

Syvie Studente, Nina Seppala, and Noemi Sadowska. “Facilitating Creative Thinking in the Classroom:  Investigating the Effects of Plants and the Colour Green on Visual and Verbal Creativity.” Thinking Skills and Creativity, 19 (2016) 1-8.

In a Berlin study, home window views that afforded a higher percentage of vegetation as well as a higher diversity of plant material were connected to lower stress levels in residents, as indicated by lower hair...

Honold, Jasmin, Tobia Lakes, Reinhard Beyer, and Elke van der Meer. “Restoration in urban spaces: Nature views from home, greenways, and public parks.” Environment and Behavior, 48.6 (2016): 796-825.

Tree species differ in their ability to reduce air and surface temperatures and increase relative humidity. Trees with a high leaf-area density and rate of transpiration are more effective at cooling air...

Gillner, Sten, Juliane Vogt, Andreas Tharang, Sebastian Dettmann, and Andreas Roloff. (2015). Role of street trees in mitigating effects of heat and drought at highly sealed urban sites. Landscape and Urban Planning, 143, 33-42.