Resilience of the reported global human-nature interaction network to pandemic conditions

TL;DR

This study used social media data to analyze the global human-nature interaction network, revealing its resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic and highlighting increased local CES production and the importance of urban greenspaces for well-being.

Contribution

First global estimation of the CES network from social media data, demonstrating its resilience and local production shifts during pandemic conditions.

Findings

CES network remained resilient during COVID-19 restrictions.

Increased local CES production, especially related to urban greenspaces.

Self-care activities linked to urban greenspaces increased during the pandemic.

Abstract

Understanding human-nature interactions and the architecture of coupled human-nature systems is crucial for sustainable development. Cultural ecosystem services (CES), defined as intangible benefits derived from nature exposure, contribute to maintaining and improving human well-being. However, we have limited understanding of how well-being benefits emerge from CES co-production. In this study, for the first time, we estimated the global CES network from self-reported interactions between nature features and human activities underpinning CES co-production using social media. First, we used a bottom-up, approach to define the global repertoire of nature features and human activities used during CES co-production using 682,000 posts on Reddit. We then sampled Twitter to estimate the co-occurrence of these features and activities over the past five years, retrieving 41.7 millions tweets. These tweets were used to estimate the CES bipartite network, where each link was weighted by the number of times nature features and human activities co-occurred in tweets. We expected to observe large changes in the CES network topology in relation to the global mobility restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic. This was not the case and the global CES network was generally resilient. However, a higher order singular value decomposition of the CES tensor revealed an impulse on the link between self care activities and urban greenspace. This could be due to an increased need for self care during the pandemic and urban greenspace enabling CES to be produced locally. Thus, providing resilience for maintaining well-being during the pandemic. Our user based analysis also indicated a shift towards local CES production during the beginning of the pandemic. Thus, supporting that CES was produced locally. These findings suggest an overall need for CES and access to features providing CES in local communities.