Urban

Considerable research has been conducted on the growth of urban population, but very little is known about why urban land areas expand. In a recent paper, a YSE-led research team investigated the role of population and economic growth in affecting urban land expansion for more than 300 cities.

Urban land expansion of up to 1.53 million square kilometers of new land will threaten the survival of more than 800 species but a focus on urban planning that protects habitats can mitigate the impact.

The Yale School of the Environment is partnering with the Central Park Conservancy and the Natural Areas Conservancy in a first-of-its-kind initiative aimed at helping cities develop strategies to manage and mitigate the impacts of climate change on urban parks.

Four Yale School of the Environment faculty members have been included on Clarivate Analytics’ annual list of the world’s most influential researchers.

A new Yale-led study suggests that regional variations may cause the phenomenon known as the urban heat island effect, and that the impacts of haze pollution in the U.S. and China vary significantly.

Disasters that occur in one place can trigger costs in cities across the world due to the interconnectedness of the global urban trade network. In fact, these secondary impacts can be three times greater than the local impacts, a Yale study finds.

In a new paper, Karen Seto makes the case that achieving food and environmental security in an era of rapid urbanization will require a better understanding of how urban and food systems are intertwined.

The annual Rock to Rock Earth Day Ride — which has raised more than $1 million for environmental groups such as the F&ES-based Urban Resources Initiative (URI) over the past decade — will go virtual this year due to social distancing requirements. URI’s Anna Pickett, a longtime organizer of the event, explains what that means.

A new Yale study will examine whether irrigation of green spaces to mitigate the urban heat island effect in some of the world’s driest cities will be worth the cost — namely, drawing down precious and increasingly diminished water resources.

In a Special Feature of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, edited by Yale Professor Karen C. Seto, some of the field’s leading thinkers examine the growing implications of global urbanization trends, including their impacts on resource use, potential environmental tradeoffs, and human wellbeing.

A group of Yale professors are using bicycles to measure heat stress in New Haven.

In a new study, Yale researchers will use remote sensing data to assess changes in urban settlements across the Himalayan region — and how those shifts have affected land use, the frequency and magnitude of natural disasters, and just how sensitive the region’s socio-economic systems are to these stressors.

Researchers at F&ES have partnered with the Natural Areas Conservancy and the Trust for Public Land on a first-of-its-kind report on how U.S. cities manage urban natural forests — critical greenspaces that they found are frequently lacking the proper resources.

Karen Seto, Yale School of the Environment (YSE) Frederick C. Hixon Professor of Geography Urbanization, has been named one of 15 leading women in machine learning for Earth observation by Radiant Earth Foundation for her research of global importance.

F&ES this week announced the winners of the first Leitner Awards for Uncommon Environmental Collaborations, a grant fund that promotes collaborations for environmental teaching and research across the Yale campus.