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Human ecology is an interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary study of the relationship between humans and their natural, social, and built environments. The philosophy and study of human ecology has a diffuse history with advancements in ecology, geography, sociology, psychology, anthropology, zoology, epidemiology, public health, and home economics, among others.
Urban ecology is the scientific study of the relation of living organisms with each other and their surroundings in an urban environment. An urban environment refers to environments dominated by high-density residential and commercial buildings, paved surfaces, and other urban-related factors that create a unique landscape. The goal of urban ecology is to achieve a balance between human culture and the natural environment.
William Rees, FRSC, is Professor Emeritus at the University of British Columbia and former director of the School of Community and Regional Planning (SCARP) at UBC.
Climate change adaptation is the process of adjusting to the effects of climate change. These can be both current or expected impacts. Adaptation aims to moderate or avoid harm for people, and is usually done alongside climate change mitigation. It also aims to exploit opportunities. Humans may also intervene to help adjust for natural systems. There are many adaptation strategies or options. For instance, building hospitals that can withstand natural disasters, roads that don't get washed away in the face of rains and floods. They can help manage impacts and risks to people and nature. The four types of adaptation actions are infrastructural, institutional, behavioural and nature-based options. Some examples of these are building seawalls or inland flood defenses, providing new insurance schemes, changing crop planting times or varieties, and installing green roofs or green spaces. Adaptation can be reactive or proactive.
In ecology, urban ecosystems are considered a ecosystem functional group within the intensive land-use biome. They are structurally complex ecosystems with highly heterogeneous and dynamic spatial structure that is created and maintained by humans. They include cities, smaller settlements and industrial areas, that are made up of diverse patch types. Urban ecosystems rely on large subsidies of imported water, nutrients, food and other resources. Compared to other natural and artificial ecosystems human population density is high, and their interaction with the different patch types produces emergent properties and complex feedbacks among ecosystem components.
Climate risk is the potential for problems for societies or ecosystems from the impacts of climate change. The assessment of climate risk is based on formal analysis of the consequences, likelihoods and responses to these impacts. Societal constraints can also shape adaptation options. There are different values and preferences around risk, resulting in differences of risk perception.
In ecology, resilience is the capacity of an ecosystem to respond to a perturbation or disturbance by resisting damage and subsequently recovering. Such perturbations and disturbances can include stochastic events such as fires, flooding, windstorms, insect population explosions, and human activities such as deforestation, fracking of the ground for oil extraction, pesticide sprayed in soil, and the introduction of exotic plant or animal species. Disturbances of sufficient magnitude or duration can profoundly affect an ecosystem and may force an ecosystem to reach a threshold beyond which a different regime of processes and structures predominates. When such thresholds are associated with a critical or bifurcation point, these regime shifts may also be referred to as critical transitions.
A social-ecological system consists of 'a bio-geo-physical' unit and its associated social actors and institutions. Social-ecological systems are complex and adaptive and delimited by spatial or functional boundaries surrounding particular ecosystems and their context problems.
Urban resilience has conventionally been used to describe the change in structure and function of urban areas. It is defined as the "measurable ability of any urban system, with its inhabitants, to maintain continuity through all shocks and stresses, while positively adapting and transforming towards sustainability".
Carl Folke, is a trans-disciplinary environmental scientist and a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. He is a specialist in economics, resilience, and social-ecological systems, viewing such systems as intertwined and potentially unexpected in their interactions. As a framework for resource management, this perspective brings important insights to environmental management, urban planning, and climate adaptation. He suggests ways to improve our ability to understand complex social-ecological interactions, deal with change, and build resilience, often working at smaller scales as a step towards addressing larger scales.
Ecosystem health is a metaphor used to describe the condition of an ecosystem. Ecosystem condition can vary as a result of fire, flooding, drought, extinctions, invasive species, climate change, mining, fishing, farming or logging, chemical spills, and a host of other reasons. There is no universally accepted benchmark for a healthy ecosystem, rather the apparent health status of an ecosystem can vary depending upon which health metrics are employed in judging it and which societal aspirations are driving the assessment. Advocates of the health metaphor argue for its simplicity as a communication tool. "Policy-makers and the public need simple, understandable concepts like health." Some critics worry that ecosystem health, a "value-laden construct", can be "passed off as science to unsuspecting policy makers and the public." However, this term is often used in portraying the state of ecosystems worldwide and in conservation and management. For example, scientific journals and the UN often use the terms planetary and ecosystem health, such as the recent journal The Lancet Planetary Health.
Climate resilience is a concept to describe how well people or ecosystems are prepared to bounce back from certain climate hazard events. The formal definition of the term is the "capacity of social, economic and ecosystems to cope with a hazardous event or trend or disturbance". For example, climate resilience can be the ability to recover from climate-related shocks such as floods and droughts. Different actions can increase climate resilience of communities and ecosystems to help them cope. They can help to keep systems working in the face of external forces. For example, building a seawall to protect a coastal community from flooding might help maintain existing ways of life there.
The contributions of women in climate change have received increasing attention in the early 21st century. Feedback from women and the issues faced by women have been described as "imperative" by the United Nations and "critical" by the Population Reference Bureau. A report by the World Health Organization concluded that incorporating gender-based analysis would "provide more effective climate change mitigation and adaptation."
Nature-based solutions describe the development and use of nature (biodiversity) and natural processes to address diverse socio-environmental issues. These issues include climate change mitigation and adaptation, human security issues such as water security and food security, and disaster risk reduction. The aim is that resilient ecosystems provide solutions for the benefit of both societies and biodiversity. The 2019 UN Climate Action Summit highlighted nature-based solutions as an effective method to combat climate change. For example, nature-based systems for climate change adaptation can include natural flood management, restoring natural coastal defences, and providing local cooling.
Karachepone N. Ninan is an ecological economist. Dr. Ninan was born in Nairobi, Kenya where he had his early school education. Thereafter he relocated to India where he continued his high school and college education.
Nancy B. Grimm is an American ecosystem ecologist and professor at Arizona State University. Grimm's substantial contributions to the understanding of urban and arid ecosystem biogeochemistry are recognized in her numerous awards. Grimm is an elected Fellow of the American Geophysical Union, Ecological Society of America, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Elena M. Bennett is an American ecosystem ecologist specializing in studying the interactions of ecosystem services on landscape. She is currently a Professor and the Canada Research Chair in Sustainability Science at McGill University. She was inducted to the Royal Society of Canada’s College of New Scholars, Artists, and Scientists in 2017. She was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2022 and became a Guggenheim Fellow in the same year.
Xuemei Bai (白雪梅) is a Distinguished Professor of Urban Environment and Human Ecology at the Australian National University. She was the winner of the 2018 Volvo Environmental Prize, and is the winner of the KIEL Global Economy Prize 2021. She is an elected fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia and an ARC Laureate Fellow (2023-). Bai is a commissioner of the Earth Commission, leading a group on methods of cross-scale translation from planetary limits to local actors. She has been named as one of the World’s 100 Most Influential People in Climate Change Policy in 2019 and 2021.
Sander Ernst van der Leeuw is an archaeologist, historian, academic, and author. He is an Emeritus Foundation Professor of Anthropology and Sustainability, Director Emeritus of the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability, and the Founding Director of School of Human Evolution and Social Change at Arizona State University.
Aliyu Salisu Barau is a Nigerian academic and a full professor of Urban and Regional Planning at Bayero University Kano. He is the Dean of the Faculty of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Bayero University Kano and the West Africa Hub Director of the Urban Climate Change Research Network (UCCRN), affiliated with the Earth Institute, Columbia University. He is also a Chartered Town Planner of the UK's Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI).
References
- ↑ Bradley, Ryan (2015-04-23). "The Rat Paths of New York". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331 . Retrieved 2023-09-26.
In Central Park, I met Timon McPhearson, a professor of urban ecology at the New School. McPhearson studies how animals and plants get from one place to the next; for the last 10 years, he has been thinking about how to connect big "reservoirs of biodiversity," like Central Park, to everything else. Even things as small as the walled-in tree pits all along the sidewalk outside the park. "That's a dot," he said, pointing to one. "I want to connect the dots."
- ↑ Leland, John (2021-08-20). "Why an East Harlem Street Is 31 Degrees Hotter Than Central Park West". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331 . Retrieved 2023-09-26.
Timon McPhearson, director of the Urban Systems Lab at the New School, has spent the last decade studying the disproportionate impact this heat has on Black and brown neighborhoods, where a paucity of tree cover and green space creates "urban heat islands" whose air temperature can be two to four degrees warmer than neighboring areas, with the difference in surface temperatures many times that.
- 1 2 3 "Exploring the urban ecosystem: A dialogue with Dr. Timon McPhearson on past, present, and future trends". Yale Environment Review. 2023-09-07. Retrieved 2023-11-16.
McPhearson received his B.S. degree in 1997, studying Environmental Biology at Taylor University. He then pursued a Ph.D. in Ecology, Evolution, and Natural Resources, graduating from Rutgers University in 2004. McPhearson is also a lead member of the urban systems chapter within the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report. For McPhearson, it is urgent to develop urban ecology as a field. Given the far-ranging impacts of urban development, from climate change to human migration, a new scientific field helps investigate common threads.
- ↑ "Climate Activists Hit the Streets | The Nation". 2011-03-18. Archived from the original on 2011-03-18. Retrieved 2023-11-16.
While most New Yorkers were just rolling out of their beds on Saturday morning, Timon McPhearson was already at work in the middle of a forest, marking holes in the ground with a can of spray paint. McPhearson, an ecology professor at The New School, was there to plant thousands of cedar, oak and walnut trees in experimental plots, as part of his long-term study to evaluate the environmental effects of a citywide reforestation program called MillionTreesNYC.
- ↑ Mercado, Angely (2021-10-19). "New York City's subway system isn't ready for a storm-filled future". Popular Science. Retrieved 2023-11-16.
Timon McPhearson, a professor and the director of the Urban Systems Lab at the New School, argues that there is not one perfect solution for climate proofing the city's subway platforms. He says there needs to be a tiered approach that can work on addressing different causes of flooding during a storm.
- ↑ Medium, Seattle (2022-06-18). "Black People Are More Likely To Die From Heat Stress Than White People In New York City, Report Says". The Seattle Medium. Retrieved 2023-11-16.
Timon McPhearson, director of the Urban Systems Lab at The New School who studies the disproportionate impact that heat has on Black and brown neighborhoods, said generally cities have been built and designed in the 20th century in a way that traps heat, making them much hotter than surrounding areas and much hotter in poorer communities and communities of color.
- ↑ "NYC Funded a Pilot to Make Basement Apartments Safer, But Then It Went Off Track". nextcity.org. Retrieved 2023-11-16.
"It's unlikely that you're going to be able to stop flooding entirely," says Timon McPhearson, a professor of Urban Ecology at the New School as well as a member of the New York City Panel on Climate Change. McPhearson says there's no standard closure that would block off water in basement apartments because of the variety of the apartments.
- ↑ Wittenberg, Ariel (2021-08-23). "Heat kills. This underfunded program could help". E&E News by POLITICO. Retrieved 2023-11-16.
"You get used to hearing people refer to the most vulnerable areas of the city as low-income and Black and brown, but it really is shocking when you see the spatial overlap of where Black and brown communities live, the air conditioning adaptation and the very high heat," said Timon McPhearson, who directs the Urban Systems Lab at the New School, which maps heat vulnerability in the city. "It's long-term systemic racism that has put the most vulnerable people in vulnerable areas."
- ↑ "McPhearson brings climate warnings, scientific progress to Elon". Today at Elon. 2019-11-05. Retrieved 2023-11-16.
One of the aspects McPhearson is most concerned with is that plans for urban sustainability and resiliency don't exclude or harm minority or poorer neighborhoods.
- ↑ "How Green Spaces Protect City Residents From Climate Change". NBC LX Home. Retrieved 2023-11-16.
"One of the things I think we've realized is that ... the way we've developed [cities] over the last century … isn't working when it comes to protecting everyone from climate change, but it's specifically not working for particular communities that have less green space," explained Timon McPhearson, who maps climate risks in New York City to understand which neighborhoods are most at risk. He's found that low income communities are the hottest and the most vulnerable to flooding. This is not a coincidence.
- ↑ "Transforming urban systems: Toward sustainability". EurekAlert!. Retrieved 2023-11-16.
Pickett collaborated with Timon McPhearson, a Research Fellow at Cary Institute and Professor at The New School in New York City, and lead author Weiqi Zhou of the Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, on the paper, which is the first to bring together five leading frameworks of urban ecology.
- 1 2 "Stockholm Resilience Centre 2019 annual report by Per Larsson - Issuu". issuu.com. 2020-03-30. Retrieved 2023-09-26.
- ↑ "New network on nature-based solutions for cities". www.stockholmresilience.org. 2019-11-13. Retrieved 2023-11-16.
Erik Andersson and Timon McPhearson are among the centre researchers who will benefit from being part of "Nature-based Solutions for Urban Resilience in the Anthropocene" (NATURA). This umbrella network bring together a host of other networks in Africa, Asia-Pacific, Europe, North and Latin America. It is funded by the US National Science Foundation for US$2,000,000 for five years.
- 1 2 "Centre researchers awarded for groundbreaking paper on urban sustainability". www.stockholmresilience.org. 2023-04-12. Retrieved 2023-09-26.
- ↑ "Sustainability Science Awards – Historical Records Committee | Ecological Society of America" . Retrieved 2023-11-16.
- ↑ "CBC Progress Report Fall 2022" (PDF). www.amnh.org.
- ↑ "How Ida dodged NYC's flood defenses". MIT Technology Review. Retrieved 2023-11-16.
With the input of researchers like McPhearson, New York City has developed plans to improve its defenses against storm-caused flooding. A forward-looking stormwater resiliency plan released in May 2021 included an assessment of flood risk across the city and proposed solutions ranging from social strategies, like educating local city councils on flood risks, to engineering techniques such as more green roofs and rain gardens.
- ↑ "New flood maps are coming. They won't look pretty". ny1.com. Retrieved 2023-11-16.
"The more accurate understanding we have of where it's likely to flood, the better we can prioritize investments to build resiliency to protect against flooding," said Timon McPhearson, an associate professor of urban ecology at The New School.
- ↑ Long, Rebecca (2020-06-25). "'Revel in the grubby wilderness': how to spot nature from lockdown". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077 . Retrieved 2023-11-16.
McPhearson's ongoing research into how individuals are responding to the Covid-19 crisis indicates that people are visiting green spaces more often than they did before.
- 1 2 sneadm (2022-10-27). "New School Professor Timon McPhearson Part of Two Research Teams Honored with the 2022 Gulbenkian Prize for Humanity". New School News. Retrieved 2023-09-26.
McPhearson is a lead author of the IPCC's sixth edition of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Assessment Report and a contributing author to IPBES' assessment reports.
- ↑ Lauria, Maddy (2022-05-03). "Shoring up coastlines and communities with green infrastructure". Fix. Retrieved 2023-11-16.
- ↑ Timon McPhearson | The New School for Public Engagement , retrieved 2023-09-26
- ↑ "Mayor de Blasio, Lower Manhattan Leaders Announce New $100 Million City Commitment". The official website of the City of New York. August 27, 2015. Retrieved 2023-11-16.
- 1 2 "Timon McPhearson | Beijer Institute". beijer.kva.se. Retrieved 2023-11-16.
