Children Swap Forest Play for Screens

Trine Hay Setsaas

2025-09-22T13:50:00.0000000 2025-09-22T13:54:28.1830000

Free play in the forest. Photo credit: Juliet Landrø/NINA

In Norway, children now spend less time than before in forests, fields, and green areas. A new study from the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research (NINA) shows that children’s use of nature has dropped significantly over the past ten years. When children lose their closeness to nature, they also lose an important arena for learning about the connections that all life depends on.

Nature strengthens health and resilience

Being in nature improves both mental and physical health. Nature reduces stress, strengthens the immune system, and increases concentration and well-being. At the same time, nature provides vital ecosystem services, such as clean water, fresh air, pollination, and climate regulation.

“When people have access to and take care of nature, society becomes more resilient, both through better public health and by safeguarding nature’s essential functions,” says Kristin Evensen Mathiesen, Research Director at NINA.

Fewer children play in the forest

Ten years ago, half of Norwegian schoolchildren played in forests or other nature areas at least once a week. Today, much of this play has moved indoors or to structured playgrounds. And, only three in ten parents say their children play freely in nature.

“Society has changed, and children’s encounters with nature are no longer as natural a part of everyday life as before. Our data show that play and time spent in nature areas are losing ground to screen time, schoolwork, and organized leisure activities,” says NINA researcher Vegard Gundersen, lead author of the newly published study.

Parents also point to a lack of playmates, bad weather, and their own busy schedules as reasons why children spend less time in nature.

Nature is available, but motivation is missing

“It’s not primarily about access to nature. Most children in Norway have nature areas nearby. The problem is that children lack the time or motivation to use them,” explains Berit Köhler, NINA Researcher and co-author of the study.

The study is based on two nationwide surveys of Norwegian parents, conducted in 2013 and 2023. Each parent answered questions about their oldest child between the ages of 6 and 12.

Consequences for health and the future

The research suggests that less time in nature can negatively affect children’s physical and mental health. It may also influence how future generations relate to nature and the environment.

“When children’s contact with nature declines, it can also weaken their understanding of nature’s value and their willingness to care for it,” Gundersen emphasizes.

The researchers argue that the solution is not only to provide more outdoor areas, but also to change attitudes and everyday routines. Schools, kindergartens, and organised leisure activities can play a key role by giving children more time and space for free play in nature.

Read the full article here

Contact: Vegard Gundersen

Less Outdoor Recreation in Forests After Clear-Cutting – Especially Near Cities

Anne Olga Syverhuset

2025-03-05T08:21:00.0000000 2025-03-25T14:28:10.4770000

With high timber prices in recent years, many people have seen their local forests harvested or new forest roads cutting through familiar hiking areas. Visual studies have shown that people prefer forest landscapes without obvious interventions, especially areas without clear-cutting. But how does this aesthetic preference affect people’s actual use of forests for recreation and physical activity?

Researchers from the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research (NINA) analyzed 2.7 million fitness activities along forest trails recorded by the Strava app, before and after clear-cutting, to determine whether clear-cutting impacts how people use nature.

“There are more than 70 published scientific papers in the Nordic region showing that clear-cuts are the least preferred type of forest. This study is one of the few that examines how new clear-cuts actually affect recreational use,” says NINA researcher Vegard Gundersen, who has studied the topic for many years.

And clear-cuts do have an effect:

“We found that after logging, there was a 3.7% decrease in the number of hikers in the affected areas. Overall, we estimate that clear-cutting displaces about 1.5 million recreational activities annually, including hiking, cycling, and skiing. The clearest effect is seen near urban areas,” says NINA researcher Zander Venter, who analyzed the Strava data.

More Skiing After Clear-Cutting

Although people prefer old-growth forests, other factors—such as accessibility and infrastructure—can play an equally important role in usage. Previous research suggests that the construction of forest roads and open areas after logging can in some cases improve access and thereby promote recreational activity. As a result, the effect of clear-cutting varies greatly between different types of activities.

“So while the overall effect on recreational activity is negative, we found an increase in cross-country skiing after clear-cutting. The logged areas have a different visual effect in winter—they provide open spaces with light, and the snow covers the traces of logging. Even though we see a positive effect on skiing, skiing makes up a smaller portion of overall outdoor activities”, Gundersen explains.

Clear-Cutting Can Have Significant Consequences for the Recreational Value of Forests

In other European countries, natural capital accounting shows that outdoor recreation is the ecosystem service with the greatest socioeconomic value. The value of outdoor recreation is substantial because seemingly small values per user add up across large numbers of people, especially in urban-proximate recreational areas. Even small percentage impacts on outdoor recreation due to open clear-cuts in urban forests accumulate over the years. This leads to an overall loss of value that can be significant compared to the value of the harvested timber.

At the same time, the researchers’ estimates of recreational value loss are conservative, as they do not include potential losses from other activities such as mushroom and berry picking, hiking, and camping off the trail network. The effects on biodiversity from clear-cutting, or on public health due to reduced nature-based activity, were also not included in the study.

“Still, we document substantial socioeconomic losses for outdoor recreation due to clear-cutting in Østmarka, Nordmarka, and other urban forests in Norway,” says NINA researcher David Barton, who works on the economic valuation of ecosystem services.

A regulation on forest management and operations in Oslo allows the municipality to deny logging when it poses a ‘significant disadvantage for outdoor recreation.’

“What constitutes ‘significant’ in politics and economics is relative. The question of how large the losses of ecosystem services, biodiversity, and public health need to be before they are considered ‘significant’ compared to the value of timber from clear-cutting is a political one. We need to work together to find out how forestry can be locally adapted so that it is not ‘significantly’ negative,” Barton concludes.

Read the full article: Impacts of forest clear-cutting on recreational activity: Evidence from crowdsourced mobility data

Contact: Vegard Gundersen

Hunting for the sound of untouched nature

Camilla Næss

2024-08-07T10:30:00.0000000 2024-09-05T22:58:13.8730000

NINA Researcher Rose Keller uses volunteers who undertake "hikes of sound" in the national parks. It involves actively listening to the sourroundings, and describing the soundscapes in questionnaires. 

Many of the participants were surprised, as they reported an increased awareness of the soundscapes in the surroundings, and the importance of natural silence. 

Sound is important for the nature experience

Sounds can be just as important to a nature experience as visual impressions. And at a time when more and more people seek refuge in nature for peace and quiet, national parks play an important role as noise-free oases.

In the project Sounds Like Norway, Keller and colleagues map the importance of natural soundscapes for outdoor recreation and biodiversity. The "hikes of sound" are part of this project, and the results will describe which sounds are important for the hikers' experience of the national park, for the visual quality of an area and even the identity of Norwegian nature.

- Noise can make people less motivated to conserve nature areas, because the place already is perceived as degraded. On the other hand, natural silence can help people to safeuard nature, spend more time in nature, and leave less traces in nature such as litter, explains Keller.

By understanding which sounds are most significant for people's experience of nature, we can better safeguard these and ensure that future generations also can enjoy the peace and tranquility of nature.

Sounds like Norway

Imagine that you are hiking in the mountains. There is just enough mist to make the view magical. Then the silence is broken by the sound of a highway. This illustrates how sound is part of our "view" of nature. We cannot see the traffic, but can clearly hear it. This also changes the experience of the hike and the view of the landscape, often in a negatively, because we often seek the untouched.

The project aims to map how important natural soundscapes are for outdoor recreation and biodiversity, and to develop indicators that can be used in national park planning.

Learn more about Nordic Soundscapes Research Network: The Nordic Soundscapes Research Network (NSRN) addresses the foundational acoustic elements of conservation, experience of natural environments and sustainability. 

The international collaboration project Silenzi maps the quiality of the soundscapes in national parks in Norway, Italy and UK. 

Contakt: Rose Keller

Towards a common approach to assess nature's contribution to tourism

Trine Hay Setsaas

2024-05-28T11:46:00.0000000 2024-08-30T11:23:16.6900000

The beautiful Geiranger Fjord, UNESCO World Heritage Site and a popular tourist destination. Photo credit: Odd Terje Sandlund

Tourism is one of the world’s largest industries, generating nearly 10 % of the global gross domestic product (GDP). Nature-based tourism represent 20 % of the tourism sector, contributing to both local livelihoods and economies, and conservation of invaluable nature for future generations.    

Researchers from NINA and Bulgarian colleagues has teamed up to evaluate methodologies for monetary valuation of ecosystem services in the tourism sector in Bulgaria, as an approach to integrate natural capital information in, for instance, investment and business planning, and for monitoring sustainability of activities at local and sector levels. 

In a recently published report experts from NINA provide an overview and discuss contexts in which ecosystem services assessments can be useful when developing nature-based tourism. They present various monetary valuation methods, including those compatible with national accounts following the United Nations statistical standard, i.e. the System of Environmental Economic Accounting - Ecosystem Accounting (SEEA - EA).  

No current common global approach

There is currently no common framework to assess the potential contribution of nature to nature-based tourism activities, or how these values can conflict with other land-use allocations. Ecosystem services assessments could play this part, says Rusch, as they capture a broader range of values, which can be made explicit, quantified, and weighted against each other. 

Despite this potential, the application of ecosystem services assessments to support planning and investment decisions is still at its infancy, both generally and for the tourism sector.  

The momentum triggered by the SEEA EA process, as well as the new commitments under the Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF, Targets 9, 14, 15 and 21) of the Convention of Biological Diversity (CBD), has the potential to foster the further development of ecosystem services methodologies in the tourism sector, concludes Rusch.

Read the Report: Aronsen, E.E., Rusch, G.M. & Immerzeel, B. 2024. Ecosystem services assessments and nature-based tourism - Approaches focusing on monetary valuation methods

Contact: Graciela Rusch

Norwegian-Russian cooperation aims to stop the spread of alien species to the Arctic

Jan Arne Stokmo

2021-04-20T13:10:00.0000000 2021-06-30T14:51:09.3600000

The main message for travelers to Arctic regions is that they should brush, hoover and wash clothes, shoes, luggage and equipment before they start their journey. Fishing equipment should be disinfected. Such simple measures will protect the vulnerable plant and wildlife in arctic regions.

The campaign is launched this year in northwest Russia after being tested on travelers to Svalbard in a pilot project in 2018-2019. It is also now expanding to Iceland and Greenland.

Serious threat to species

"Alien species are a threat to biodiversity globally, but also in the Arctic. Our goal is to inform travelers that they can easily help reduce this problem. Seeds can get stuck on mountain shoes, parasites can follow fishing gear and so on. With simple measures, the dispersion of such stowaways can be avoided, explains Jørn Thomassen, head of the project in the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research (NINA).

NINA is leading the campaign in cooperation with the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry in Finland and the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency in Sweden. For the launch in Russia, The National Park Russian Arctic (NPRA) is the central partner.

Will raise awareness of travelers

Alien species are species that have come to an area where they naturally do not belong, due to human activity. They are one of the biggest threats to biodiversity globally. Many people are unaware that they can unconsciously carry alien species to the vulnerable natural areas. This is what the campaign is going to do something with.

"Alien species can establish themselves and displace local species, and also threaten entire ecosystems. Climate change increases the chance of unwanted species gaining a foothold in the Arctic, Thomassen warns.

Collaboration with the tourism industry

In order for the campaign to succeed, we depend on good cooperation with tour operators, airlines, governments and more. The pilot project in Svalbard showed that the industries themselves took responsibility and were a crucial piece in reaching out to the travelers.

In Russia, the authorities and Russian tour operators carrying guests and workers to Arctic parts of Russia are also involved.

Uses animation film

An important part of the campaign consists of a two-minute animation film in which a speaking polar bear examines various travelers for alien species.

The film and accompanying website is translated into Russian and is meant to convince Russian-speaking travelers to take steps to stop the spread of alien species. The film is also subtitled in 13 languages for use in other parts of the Arctic.

Joint efforts

The campaign in northwest Russia is funded by the Ministry of Climate and Environment in Norway through the environmental cooperation programme with Russia.

For more information on the problem of alien species in the Arctic and measures to stop the spread of them on www.stoparcticaliens.com.

On behalf of the Norwegian Environment Agency, NINA has produced a report showing the status of mapping and monitoring of foreign species in the Arctic and recommended measures for further mapping and monitoring. The report from NINA (in Norwegian) can be read here.

Contacts:

NINA: Jørn Thomassen

NINA: Inga Elise Bruteig

NINA: Kristine Bakke Westergaard

Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (Finland): Johanna Niemivuo-Lahti 

Swedish Environmental Protection Agency: Melanie Josefsson 

National Park Russian Arctic: Ivan Mizin

More about invasive species: Aliens in the Arctic (podcast)

Facts:

• Alien species are a global threat to biodiversity.
• Plant and wildlife in the Arctic is particularly vulnerable to intruders from outside.
• Travelers to arctic regions can carry seeds, insects and parasites on clothes, equipment and luggage to the Arctic without knowing it.
• The Norwegian Institute for Nature Research, the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency and the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry in Finland have therefore made a film to raise awareness of the problem.
• The information campaign and film will now also be spread in northwest Russia.
• The main message is that you can help protect the vulnerable nature of the Arctic by taking some simple measures.
• The main measures are brushing, hovering and washing clothes, shoes, luggage and equipment before departure. Fishing equipment should be disinfected.
• The film is produced by the Trondheim-based company Klipp og lim, and is funded by the Nordic Council of Ministers, the Norwegian Environment Agency and the Governor of Svalbard.