Making ecosystems visible – bringing new techniques to enhance learning and engagement with nature in cities

Short Description:<br/>Experiential learning is important for people’s knowledge of and engagement with the natural world. Greater engagement in turn brings multiple benefits to wellbeing and physical health, and is particularly important as young people’s engagement with nature is rapidly declining.<br/><br/>Urban nature-based-solutions (NBS) provide considerable opportunities for enhancing people’s experiences of natural processes, since more than half of the world’s population live in cities, and urban nature may be the only way for many people to experience nature. At the same time, new techniques for mapping, modelling and visualising our urban NBS and the benefits they provide, are exceedingly useful heuristic tools for enhancing learning and engagement. <br/><br/>This brings multiple opportunities: <br/>- innovative tools for visualizing NBS in ways that enhance people’s understanding of long-term ecological processes and make the less visible benefits from greenspace (improved mental health, relaxation, pollution removal, carbon sequestration etc.) more immediately tangible.<br/>-new ways of presenting urban nature and NBS to young people and the public to stimulate interest and activities.<br/>-new opportunities for exploring the educational potential of NBS and how we can improve existing NBS or create new NBS to bring more options for creative learning and playful interaction among people within urban ecosystems.<br/><br/>This session builds on ideas developed in the EU H2020 REGREEN project (www.regreen-project.eu/). We welcome presentations on creative ways of enhancing learning and engagement with urban nature, for example making use of mapping, modelling or other visualisation tools, and new ways of thinking about engagement with nature. <br/>