Forest Bathing and Smart Devices

Dear Colleagues,

In today's stressful society, various approaches have been proposed to reduce stress. One of them is forest bathing. This is an activity carried out to improve health by spending time in a natural environment, especially a forest. In Japan, the healing effects of the phytoncide aroma of coniferous trees, the gentle breeze, the sound of rivers, and birdsong are said to relieve fatigue. In Germany, for example, people walk along forest trails to improve their health, and in Thailand, yoga is practiced in forests.

“Health tourism", which focuses on maintaining, promoting, and restoring health, is also developing. According to "Global Wellness Economy: Looking Beyond COVID" (Dec. 2021), the global tourism market is expected to expand to USD 1.127 trillion by 2025, after falling to USD 435.7 billion in 2020 due to COVID-19. Walking in nature in the suburbs was recommended to avoid crowds during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the health-conscious trend is expected to continue even after COVID-19 has abated. Therefore, research on forest bathing is once again gaining ground.

This Special Issue plans to give an overview of the most recent advances in the field of forest bathing using smart devices, and applications in various situations and areas.

This Special Issue aims to provide selected contributions on advances of basic research, applications, and on measuring the effect of forest bathing from diverse viewpoints such as ICT, AI, sensor technologies, neuro sciences, medical, tourism, economics.

Potential topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Forest bathing;
• Forest therapy;
• Measure the effect of forest bathing;
• Effect for mental health;
• Effect for brain activity;
• Wellness tourism;
• Green tourism;
• Eco-tourism;
• Designing forest bathing activity;
• Forest bathing in urban area;
• Economic effect of forest bathing;
• Forest bathing support application;
• Wearable devices for forest bathing.

Dr. Atsushi Ito
Dr. Kazutaka Ueda
Prof. Yuko Hiramatsu
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Forests is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• forest bathing
• forest therapy
• mental health
• after COVID-19
• cognitive neuroscience
• measuring the effect of forest bathing
• wellness tourism
• smart devices
• wearable devices
• forest bathing support application