A sun-drenched pine forest in the Schorfheide by Silva Wischeropp

I discovered this enchanting and mysterious woodland landscape on 17 June 2026 during the warm, sunny midday hours in the Schorfheide Biosphere Reserve in the Brandenburg region.
The photograph was taken with a NIKON D800 (lens: NIKKOR 24.0–70.0 mm f/2.8).
During a day trip, I went for a relaxing walk in the gently undulating pine forest with its tall, elegant tree trunks and a lush green forest meadow.
The vast, popular Schorfheide Biosphere Reserve offers biodiversity, a healthy forest landscape and numerous wildlife enclosures.

The forest promotes people’s health – all of its own accord. The rustling of the leaves, the scents of the trees, birdsong and the babbling of a stream heal people and boost their health.
Japanese scientists specialising in immunology, cardiology, neurobiology and other disciplines have demonstrated the health-promoting effects of the forest in a series of studies.
Simply looking at the forest is enough to lower blood pressure, slow the pulse and reduce the concentration of the stress hormone cortisol, as measured by doctors J. Lee and Bum-Yin Park in several field studies involving test subjects in Japanese forests.

People can smell some of the terpenes very distinctly, whilst others are perceived unconsciously as their concentration in the forest is low. Nevertheless, they affect the nervous system. “Smell is usually associated with instinct, emotion and preferences”, and “smell has a greater influence on physiological changes than stimuli from the other senses”.

The forest also strengthens the immune system and even protects against cancer. Qing Li, a professor at the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Tokyo, and his team have discovered that spending time in the forest stimulates the production of so-called killer cells. The body uses killer cells to fight cancer cells.