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Health is a fundamental aspect of human life and influences our well-being, relationships, productivity, and overall potential. Prioritizing health through preventive measures and healthy lifestyle choices is essential for leading fulfilling lives and contributing to thriving communities. The COVID-19 pandemic has shifted attitudes toward health, emphasizing the importance of personal responsibility, preventive measures, mental health support, community solidarity, and trust in science (Porat et al. 2020; Chan 2021; Sulik et al. 2021). In addition, it has created an opportunity for individuals and societies to reevaluate and prioritize health more comprehensively and holistically, especially by reconsidering our lives, our relationship with the environment (McNeely 2021), and the health of both.
As people gather in urban areas, the importance of green and natural environments is increasingly recognized. Green and natural environments offer numerous benefits for human health, well-being, and the environment, including physical and mental health improvement, stress reduction, social interaction and community engagement, climate regulation, air quality purification, biodiversity conservation, aesthetics, etc. (Coutts and Hahn 2015; Hunter et al. 2019). Green and natural environments have gained even greater importance after the COVID-19 pandemic (Venter et al. 2020; Spotswood et al. 2021), focusing on both in the fields of what they could provide and how people could maintain or create a better environment.
The special issue aims to publish significant papers presented at the 11th ICLEE international conference and an open call for related great papers. In this special issue, we have collected papers regarding the more insight benefits that green and natural environments could provide, as well as the ways to create more green spaces. The green and natural environments include those in urban and rural settings; the topics cover environmental volunteering program effects, onsite restorative effect, vegetation quality and quantity on human health, and a systematic approach to identify and prioritize the building roofs for greening.
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Chang, CY., Chen, HM. & Lin, BS. Special issue: Health, it matters: responsible mission for landscape and ecological engineering. Landscape Ecol Eng 19, 313–314 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11355-023-00569-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11355-023-00569-3