A growing body of empirical evidence is revealing the value of nature experience for mental health. With rapid urbanization and declines in human contact with nature globally, crucial decisions must be made about how to preserve and enhance opportunities for nature experience. Here, we first provide points of consensus across the natural, social, and health sciences on the impacts of nature experience on cognitive functioning, emotional well-being, and other dimensions of mental health. We then show how ecosystem service assessments can be expanded to include mental health, and provide a heuristic, conceptual model for doing so.

Background:At a time of increasing disconnectedness from nature, scientific interest in the potential health benefits of nature contact has grown. Research in recent decades has yielded substantial evidence, but large gaps remain in our understanding.Objectives:We propose a research agenda on nature contact and health, identifying principal domains of research and key questions that, if answered, would provide the basis for evidence-based public health interventions.Discussion:We identify research questions in seven domains: a) mechanistic biomedical studies; b) exposure science; c) epidemiology of health benefits; d) diversity and equity considerations; e) technological nature; f) economic and policy studies; and g) implementation science.Conclusions:Nature contact may offer a range of human health benefits. Although much evidence is already available, much remains unknown. A robust research effort, guided by a focus on key unanswered questions, has the potential to yield high-impact, consequential public health insights. https://doi.org/10.1289/EHP1663

Integrated ecosystem assessments challenge the broader scientific community to move beyond the important task of tallying insults to marine ecosystems to developing quantitative tools that can support the decisions national and regional resource managers must make.

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Higlights  We present a detailed framework of human wellbeing for ecosystem-based management  Connections, capabilities, and conditions may be assessed using indicators  Cross-cutting analyses can assess equity, security, resilience, and sustainability  The framework and focal attributes should be modified to serve diverse contexts  2300 existing social indicators are compiled from which to select measures

As climatic changes and human uses intensify, resource managers and other decision makers are taking actions to either avoid or respond to ecosystem tipping points, or dramatic shifts in structure and function that are often costly and hard to reverse. Evidence indicates that explicitly addressing tipping points leads to improved management outcomes. Drawing on theory and examples from marine systems, we distill a set of seven principles to guide effective management in ecosystems with tipping points, derived from the best available science. These principles are based on observations that tipping points (1) are possible everywhere, (2) are associated with intense and/or multifaceted human use, (3) may be preceded by changes in earlywarning indicators, (4) may redistribute benefits among stakeholders, (5) affect the relative costs of action and inaction, (6) suggest biologically informed management targets, and (7) often require an adaptive response to monitoring. We suggest that early action to preserve system resilience is likely more practical, affordable, and effective than late action to halt or reverse a tipping point. We articulate a conceptual approach to management focused on linking management targets to thresholds, tracking early-warning signals of ecosystem instability, and stepping up investment in monitoring and mitigation as the likelihood of dramatic ecosystem change increases. This approach can simplify and economize management by allowing decision makers to capitalize on the increasing value of precise information about threshold relationships when a system is closer to tipping or by ensuring that restoration effort is sufficient to tip a system into the desired regime.

Social indicators, both mature and emerging, are underused

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