Here in the Beyond Greenspace team, we’ve been ensconced in the analysis of the large datasets for this project for the last few months, hence a dearth of blog postings. Before too long we should have some findings, and once they’ve been duly peer-reviewed and published we’ll share summaries of them here too. We’ve had some great support from data resources such as the UK Data Service, and the NERC Centre for Ecology and Hydrology and have pretty much everything we need to get on with analyses. We’ve also been busily setting up a new research server, part funded by ESRC through this project, which is making a big impact on our capacity to run complex analyses on very large datasets.

While we’re waiting for findings from this project, we’re going to be posting some thoughts and links over the next few months, on related work, projects and publications here at the European Centre for Environment and Human Health and elsewhere. We have a systematic review of the links between biodiversity and good health and wellbeing in press, and will cover that here soon. We’ve also been publishing work on greenspace and proximity to the coast using the British Household Panel Survey, which is great preparation for using the same data sources for this project. Various other projects are highlighted at the European Centre for Environment and Human Health website. We had a really interesting time on World Environmental Health Day (back in September) participating in a Guardian Online panel chat on Reconnecting city citizens with the environment – lots of interesting discussion on relationships between people and nature in cities, and some great ideas for research that really warrant this kind of interdisciplinary approach.

We’re very fortunate to have some excellent partners from outside of academia involved in Beyond Greenspace, including independent members of our advisory board, who give us support and advice as we try to make sure the project is as useful as possible. These organisations have various programmes of work on-going that are relevant to this project, for example:

• Cornwall Wildlife Trust have a ‘Living Landscapes’ project Wild Penwith, which is all about connecting people, businesses and organisations with local landscapes and wildlife for mutual benefit.
• Forest Research have a programme on People, trees and woodlands, and have various useful publications such as Trees and forests in British society (pdf).
• Natural England have been developing work on the relationships between natural environments and health inequalities, and recently held an event on that theme.

Hopefully our research will help to inform these and similar programmes in the future – looking forward to more updates and discussions over the coming months!