DOI: 10.5061/dryad.fn2z34v1h
title: Recognizing the importance of near-home contact with nature for mental well-being based on the COVID-19 lockdown experience

description: Several urban landscape planning solutions have been introduced around the
 world to find a balance between developing urban spaces, maintaining and
 restoring biodiversity, and enhancing quality of human life. Our global
 mini-review, combined with analysis of big data collected from Google
 Trends at global scale, reveals the importance of enjoying day-to-day
 contact with nature and engaging in such activities as nature observation
 and identification and gardening for the mental well-being of humans
 during the COVID-19 pandemic. Home-based activities, such as watching
 birds from one’s window, identifying species of plants and animals,
 backyard gardening, and collecting information about nature for citizen
 science projects, were popular during the first lockdown in spring 2020,
 when people could not easily venture out of their homes. In our
 mini-review, we found 37 articles from 28 countries with a total sample of
 114,466 people. These papers suggest that home-based engagement with
 nature was an entertaining and pleasant distraction that helped preserve
 mental well-being during a challenging time. According to Google Trends,
 interest in such activities increased during lockdown compared to the
 previous five years. Millions of people worldwide are chronically or
 temporarily confined to their homes and neighborhoods because of illness,
 childcare chores, or elderly care responsibility, which makes it difficult
 for them to travel far to visit such places as national parks, created
 through land sparing, where people go to enjoy nature and relieve stress.
 This article posits that for such people, living in an urban landscape
 designed to facilitate effortless contact with small natural areas is a
 more effective way to receive the mental health benefits of contact with
 nature than visiting a sprawling nature park on rare occasions.
description: 1. Identifying the most common types of activities related to
 nature observation, gardening, and taxa identification during the first
 lockdown based on scientific articles and non-scientific press
 For scientific articles, in March 2023 we searched Scopus and
 Google Scholar. For countries where Google is restricted, such as China,
 similar results will be available from other scientific browsers, with the
 highest number of results from our database being available from Scopus.
 We used the Google Search browser to search for globally published
 non-scientific press articles. Some selection criteria
 were applied during article review. Specifically, we excluded articles
 that were not about the first lockdown; did not study activities at a
 local scale (from balcony, window, backyard) but rather in areas far away
 from home (e.g., visiting forests); studied the mental health effect of
 observing indoor potted plants and pet animals; or transiently mentioned
 the topic or keyword without going into any scientific detail.
 We included all papers that met our criteria, that is, studies
 that analyzed our chosen topic with experiments or planned observations.
 We included all research papers, but not letters that made claims without
 any data. Google Scholar automatically screened the title, abstract,
 keywords, and the whole text of each article for the keywords we entered.
 All articles that met our criteria were read and double-checked for
 keywords and content related to the keywords (e.g., synonyms or if they
 presented content about the relevant topic without using the specific
 keywords).  We identified, from both types of articles,
 the major nature-based activities that people engaged in during the first
 lockdown in the spring of 2020. Keywords used in this study were grouped
 into six main topics: (1) COVID-19 pandemic; (2) nature-oriented activity
 focused on nature observation, identification of different taxa, or
 gardening; (3) mental well-being; (4) activities performed from a balcony,
 window, or in gardens; (5) entertainment; and (6) citizen science (see
 Table 1 for all keywords). 2. Increase in global
 trends in interest in nature observation, gardening, and taxa
 identification during the first lockdown We used the
 categorical cluster method, which was combined with big data from Google
 Trends (downloaded on 1 September 2020) and anomaly detection to identify
 trend anomalies globally in peoples’ interests. We used this combination
 of methods to examine whether interest in nature-based activities that
 were mentioned in scientific and nonscientific press articles increased
 during the first lockdown. Keywords linked with the main types of
 nature-oriented activities, as identified from press and scientific
 articles, and used according to the categorical clustering method were
 classified into the following six main categories: (1) global interest in
 bird-watching and bird identification combined with citizen science; (2)
 global interest in plant identification and gardening combined with
 citizen science; (3) global interest in butterfly watching, (4) local
 interest in early-spring (lockdown time), summer, or autumn flowering
 species that usually can be found in Central European (country: Poland)
 backyards; (5) global interest in traveling and social activities; and (6)
 global interest in nature areas and activities typically enjoyed during
 holidays and thus requiring traveling to land-spared nature reserves. The
 six categories were divided into 15 subcategories so that we could attach
 relevant words or phrases belonging to the same cluster and typically
 related to the activity (according to Google Trends and Google browser’s
 automatic suggestions; e.g., people who searched for “bird-watching”
 typically also searched for “binoculars,” “bird feeder,” “bird nest,” and
 “birdhouse”). The subcategories and keywords used for
 data collection about trends in society’s interest in the studied topic
 from Google Trends are as follows. 
 Bird-watching: “binoculars,” “bird feeder,” “bird nest,”
 “birdhouse,” “bird-watching”; Bird identification:
 “bird app,” “bird identification,” “bird identification app,” “bird
 identifier,” “bird song app”; Bird-watching combined
 with citizen science: “bird guide,” “bird identification,” “eBird,”
 “feeding birds,” “iNaturalist”; Citizen science and
 bird-watching apps: “BirdNET,” “BirdSong ID,” “eBird,” “iNaturalist,”
 “Merlin Bird ID”; Gardening: “gardening,” “planting,”
 “seedling,” “seeds,” “soil”; Shopping for gardening:
 “garden shop,” “plant buy,” “plant ebay,” “plant sell,” “plant
 shop”; Plant identification apps: “FlowerChecker,”
 “LeafSnap,” “NatureGate,” “Plantifier,” “PlantSnap”;
 Citizen science and plant identification: “iNaturalist,” “plant
 app,” “plant check,” “plant identification app,” “plant
 identifier”; Flowers that were flowering in gardens
 during lockdown in Poland: “fiołek” (viola), “koniczyna” (shamrock),
 “mlecz” (dandelion), “pierwiosnek” (primose), “stokrotka” (daisy). They
 are typical early-spring flowers growing in the gardens in Central Europe.
 We had to be more specific in this search because there are no plant
 species blooming across the world at the same time. These plant species
 have well-known biology; thus, we could easily interpret these
 results; Flowers that were not flowering during
 lockdown in Poland: “chaber” (cornflower), “mak” (poppy), “nawłoć”
 (goldenrod), “róża” (rose), “rumianek” (chamomile). They are typical
 mid-summer flowering plants often planted in gardens;
 Interest in traveling long distances and in social activities
 that involve many people: “airport,” “bus,” “café,” “driving,”
 “pub”; Single or mass commuting, and traveling:
 “bike,” “boat,” “car,” “flight,” “train”; Interest in
 distant places and activities for visiting natural areas: “forest,”
 “nature park,” “safari,” “trekking,” “trip”; Places
 and activities for holidays (typically located far away): “coral reef,”
 “rainforest,” “safari,” “savanna,” “snorkeling”;
 Butterfly watching: “butterfly watching,” “butterfly
 identification,” “butterfly app,” “butterfly net,” “butterfly
 guide”; In Google Trends, we set the
 following filters: global search, dates: July 2016–July 2020; language:
 English. 
description: Data are in Excel sheets. Data can be opened and analyzed via
 open-source software (e.g. R).