Journal ArticleDOI
Ecosystem services and urban heat riskscape moderation: water, green spaces, and social inequality in Phoenix, USA
TLDR
The results suggest the need for a systems evaluation of the benefits, costs, spatial structure, and temporal trajectory for the use of ecosystem services to moderate climate extremes.Abstract:
Urban ecosystems are subjected to high temperatures—extreme heat events, chronically hot weather, or both—through interactions between local and global climate processes. Urban vegetation may provide a cooling ecosystem service, although many knowledge gaps exist in the biophysical and social dynamics of using this service to reduce climate extremes. To better understand patterns of urban vegetated cooling, the potential water requirements to supply these services, and differential access to these services between residential neighborhoods, we evaluated three decades (1970–2000) of land surface characteristics and residential segregation by income in the Phoenix, Arizona, USA metropolitan region. We developed an ecosystem service trade-offs approach to assess the urban heat riskscape, defined as the spatial variation in risk exposure and potential human vulnerability to extreme heat. In this region, vegetation provided nearly a 25°C surface cooling compared to bare soil on low-humidity summer days; the ma...read more
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Equally green? Understanding the distribution of urban green infrastructure across student demographics in four public school districts in North Carolina, USA
TL;DR: In this article, the authors investigated whether the distribution of green infrastructure across urban landscapes is frequently uneven, resulting in unequal delivery of these services to low-income residents or those belonging to underserved racial/ethnic identities.
Journal ArticleDOI
Using Satellite-Borne Remote Sensing Data in Generating Local Warming Maps with Enhanced Resolution
TL;DR: It is concluded that remote sensing technology could be useful to enhance the spatial resolution of local warming maps, which would be useful for decision-makers considering efficient decisions in the face of increments in local temperature.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI
Neighborhoods and Violent Crime: A Multilevel Study of Collective Efficacy
TL;DR: Multilevel analyses showed that a measure of collective efficacy yields a high between-neighborhood reliability and is negatively associated with variations in violence, when individual-level characteristics, measurement error, and prior violence are controlled.
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Toward a metabolic theory of ecology
James H. Brown,James H. Brown,James F. Gillooly,Andrew P. Allen,Van M. Savage,Van M. Savage,Geoffrey B. West,Geoffrey B. West +7 more
TL;DR: This work has developed a quantitative theory for how metabolic rate varies with body size and temperature, and predicts how metabolic theory predicts how this rate controls ecological processes at all levels of organization from individuals to the biosphere.
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A soil-adjusted vegetation index (SAVI)
TL;DR: In this article, a transformation technique was presented to minimize soil brightness influences from spectral vegetation indices involving red and near-infrared (NIR) wavelengths, which nearly eliminated soil-induced variations in vegetation indices.
Journal ArticleDOI
Impact of regional climate change on human health
TL;DR: The growing evidence that climate–health relationships pose increasing health risks under future projections of climate change is reviewed and that the warming trend over recent decades has already contributed to increased morbidity and mortality in many regions of the world.
Journal ArticleDOI
Using the satellite-derived NDVI to assess ecological responses to environmental change
Nathalie Pettorelli,Jon Olav Vik,Atle Mysterud,Jean-Michel Gaillard,Compton J. Tucker,Nils Chr. Stenseth +5 more
TL;DR: The use of the NDVI in recent ecological studies is reviewed and its possible key role in future research of environmental change in an ecosystem context is outlined.