As mental health issues increase worldwide, nature-based experiences are being recognized as alternative treatments for improving health and well-being. Increasing urbanization precludes many people from accessing green spaces owing to time or physical limitations. Therefore, opportunities to connect with nature through virtual technology is being encouraged. We conducted a systematic review of studies on the psychological effects of experiencing nature using virtual technology. We searched the academic databases PubMed, Web of Science, and Scopus for relevant studies and assessed their quality using Cochrane’s RoB 2 and ROBINS-I tools. Twenty-one studies were included and the psychological outcomes were negatively synthesized by the intervention characteristics (duration, observation position of the landscape, interaction, environment description, and sensory type). Psychological outcomes were classified into emotional recovery, cognitive recovery, stress reduction, and other indicators. Emotional recovery was most consistently presented, and virtual natural contact alleviated negative emotions more than it elicited positive emotions. Additionally, virtual nature interventions lasting more than 10 min showed more consistent effects than those of less than 10 min. Moreover, an open field of view led to significant emotional recovery and an in-forest view led to significant cognitive recovery. Despite some limitations, our findings will contribute to the development of virtual forest experiences to improve human well-being.

This study was performed to analyze the effect of forest education on juvenile probationers'psychological and emotional changes. Changes of resilience, mood state and attitudes toward forest of 272 juvenile probationers, who attended forest education program co-managed by Korea Forest Service and Ministry of Justice in 2016, were identified by self-report survey. Survey analysis was performed using descriptive statistics, reliability analysis, exploratory factor analysis and paired t-test with IBM SPSS 21.0 program. The forest education program consisted of physical activity, emotional activity, cognitive activity, challenging activity and problem solving activity (e.g. physical exercises in the forest, forest meditation, observing forest with mirror, talking with trees, creating with natural objects, etc.). The result was as follows: First, it showed that program using forest education activities for juvenile probationers has an effect on the development of resilience. Second, it showed that program using forest education activities for juvenile probationers had an effect on the improvement of mood state. Third, it showed that program using forest education activities for juvenile probationers had an effect on the development of attitudes toward forest. It showed that program using forest education activities for juvenile probationers had an effect on the development of enjoying the forest and importance and usefulness of forest by sub-factors of attitudes toward forest. Therefore the result came out that forest education program had influence on positive change of juvenile probationers' resilience, mood state and increase of attitude towards forest. This study had a limitation to generalize the result of the study for the limited case, but forest education was expected to help the social adaptation and development of the at-risk youth who was exposed to the current risk. The next study need for various experts'cooperation to develop customized forest education programs for juvenile probationers and continuous monitoring of the effect.

This study analysed differences between importance and performance of 2014 forest interpreter training program through IPA with the aim to provide suggestions and improvement. First the results of a comparison of the overall average of performance and importance showed importance is higher than performance. Afterwards, the result of IPA showed that confidence of being an interpreter, active involvement, the understanding of the value of forest, expansion of the understanding of forest, the understanding of the mission of interpreter, and the understanding of the qualification of interpreter, those 6 items belong to the I quadrant. In the case of the II quadrant there were interest of the content of education and to learn a lot of things through education. Next, those how to deal with service, planning interpreter programs, clarity of the content of education, accuracy of the content of education, validity of the content of education, appropriate number of participants, and appropriate time of education involved in III quadrant. Finally, concentration in the education and the understanding of the topic of education situated in IV quadrant.

No abstract

<p>Since 1970s, South Korea has been developed rapidly in the aspects of economy and industry over 40 years due to the Economic Development Plans led by the Korean government. Consequently, urbanization has been accelerated and the population then began to be flowed into major cities. In result, many parts of forestland in South Korea have been changed into urban areas by urban expansion and population migration under forestland conversion permission by South Korean Forestland Management Law. However, such permission standards cannot help being friendly to the development due to the line of national policy, and so several environmental problems, i.e., topographical and ecological changes, have been caused over couple of decades. In this study, therefore, we suggested new enhanced permission standards in terms of topographical and ecological protection in converted forestland. In Mountainous Districts Management Act of Korea Forest Service, slope and elevation criteria have been operated to regulate the indiscriminate use of risky land parcels when forestland is converted to other land use types. However, it is impossible to consider topographical variation with only such two indices in the land parcel because the indices values are averaged in each target parcel. Therefore, for supplementing insufficient criteria, the slope gradient by Catena was suggested by converted land use types. Furthermore, the ecological indices and criteria such as stand age, Diameter at Breast Height (DBH) and soil depth were considered in this study according to the forestland-watershed and –use types on converted target parcel. Firstly, we suggested flexible degree criteria by 14 land development types as topographical standards for forestland conversion. Secondly, the ratio of ‘risky slope’ below 40% in a target forestland parcel was defined to decrease the risk of disasters such as landslides. Thirdly, standard of ecological condition were proposed as ecological score by integrating stand age, DBH and soil depth classes in the target forestland parcels by 5 forestland-watershed and 14 land use types. As a result, we could prepare acceptable standards in South Korean that can reduce topographical and ecological damages by converting other land use type.</p>