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A chorus of birdsong can talk a stressed nervous system down, even for someone standing in a city center. But pair that same birdsong with an actual forest, and something more powerful happens.
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A new study from NC State researchers found that a forest and a soundtrack of birds do more for the mind together than either does alone.
The study, published in Environmental Conservation, found that a restored forest paired with birdsong produced the lowest stress and the most positive emotions among participants. Flip the equation, gray urban space paired with the drone of traffic, and the results were the worst of the bunch.
Nils Peterson, a professor in NC State’s College of Natural Resources and the study’s lead author, elaborated on the commonsense nature of the results.
“One of the strengths of the paper is the intuitiveness of the findings, right?” Peterson said. “This is stuff that a lot of people that like nature are like, ‘Oh, I know that,’ but it’s actually demonstrated through this experimental study.”
To tease apart what was doing the work, the sounds or the setting, researchers recruited over 100 students for an experiment. Each person sat in either a restored forest or a nearby urban space, listening to either birdsong or traffic noise through noise-canceling headphones.
What emerged was one of the study’s more significant results: The forest and the birdsong were not just good together — they were good independently. Birdsong lifted people’s mood when compared to traffic noise, even in an urban setting.
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Similarly, urban settings and traffic noise increased stress by themselves. A calming forest lost some of its power when traffic noise drowned it out, highlighting the need to reduce noise pollution, according to Peterson.
“If you have this beautiful forest, but it’s just drowned out with traffic noise, you’re sort of hurting the benefits of that place,” Peterson said. “If you can figure out sound mitigation to reduce the volume of the traffic, ideally to where you can hear birds, you’re going to make that pocket forest more useful.”
The forest at the center of the study is not an untouched wilderness, either. It’s the Rocky Branch Greenway, which runs through NC State’s campus. Once choked by invasive species, the university spent years restoring it. According to Peterson, that detail matters.
“This isn’t like saying time in this primeval virgin forest is what did it,” Peterson said about mental health benefits. “This is a forest that was purposely restored and made as a small pocket in an urban environment, and it still had that effect.”
For cities, where more than 80% of people now live in the U.S., Peterson said the findings translate into goals to protect urban forests and reduce noise from traffic, ultimately seeing these restored urban forests as more than just a nice amenity.
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“They’re an investment in your community’s health,” Peterson said.
This story was originally published July 24, 2026 at 12:34 PM.