The Smells of Nature: Human Health and Hungry Herbivores

We know that spending time in nature is good for us, proven by hundreds—perhaps thousands—of scientific studies. But most of what we know about nature and its benefits have come from research focused on how seeing nature affects us. Now, however, an international team of scientists is hoping to shed light on how what we smell in natural settings impacts our health and well-being.

Plants emit odors for a variety of reasons, such as to attract pollinators, to communicate with each other, to repel harmful herbivores and insects, or to respond to changing environmental conditions. But in this time of great biodiversity loss, is the emission of these scents waning? The answer will probably surprise you: it turns out that species-rich forests release less of these gases into the atmosphere than monocultures.

The smells in nature are now even being harnessed to help restore degraded ecosystems. Reestablishing grasses, trees and other vegetation is an essential part of such plans, but a new survey of more than 2,000 restoration projects from nearly every type of ecosystem on Earth finds that most of them fail to recognize and control one of the new plants’ chief threats: hungry herbivores. Plant aromas are coming to the rescue.