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Interactions between climate change and urbanization will shape the future of biodiversity

Nature Climate Change (2024)Cite this article

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Abstract

Climate change and urbanization are two of the most prominent global drivers of biodiversity and ecosystem change. Fully understanding, predicting and mitigating the biological impacts of climate change and urbanization are not possible in isolation, especially given their growing importance in shaping human society. Here we develop an integrated framework for understanding and predicting the joint effects of climate change and urbanization on ecology, evolution and their eco-evolutionary interactions. We review five examples of interactions and then present five hypotheses that offer opportunities for predicting biodiversity and its interaction with human social and cultural systems under future scenarios. We also discuss research opportunities and ways to design resilient landscapes that address both biological and societal concerns.

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Fig. 1: Future scenarios for global urbanization and climate change.
Fig. 2: Global variation in urban heat island effects through time for selected global cities.
Fig. 3: A common experimental design for testing hypotheses.

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Acknowledgements

This study is a collaborative effort of the National Science Foundation Research Coordination Network: Eco-Evolutionary Dynamics in an Urban Planet: Underlying Mechanisms and Ecosystem Feedbacks (DEB 1840663). We acknowledge the many participants in this working group that directly and indirectly contributed to our development of the five presented hypotheses. M.C.U. was supported by NSF award no. DEB-1119877, National Science Foundation NRT grant no. 2022036, NASA awards no. 80NSSC22K0883 and no. 80NSSC19K0476, the Arden Chair in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, and a Leverhulme visiting professorship. P.R. thanks the Max Planck Society for funding.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and Center of Biological Risk, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, USA

    Mark C. Urban

  2. Department of Urban Design and Planning, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

    Marina Alberti & Anna N. Malesis

  3. Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries, Berlin, Germany

    Luc De Meester

  4. Institute of Biology, Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany

    Luc De Meester

  5. Laboratory of Aquatic Ecology, Evolution and Conservation, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium

    Luc De Meester

  6. Department of Geography and Urban Systems Institute, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China

    Yuyu Zhou

  7. Center for Biological Data Science, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA, USA

    Brian C. Verrelli

  8. Institute of Evolutionary Biology, Faculty of Biology, Biological and Chemical Research Centre, University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland

    Marta Szulkin

  9. German Center for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany

    Chloé Schmidt

  10. Department of Biology and Center for Computational and Integrative Biology, Rutgers University–Camden, Camden, NJ, US

    Amy M. Savage

  11. isoTROPIC Research Group, Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology, Jena, Germany

    Patrick Roberts

  12. Department of Biological Sciences, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

    L. Ruth Rivkin & Colin J. Garroway

  13. Polar Bears International, Bozeman, MT, USA

    L. Ruth Rivkin

  14. San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, Escondido, CA, USA

    L. Ruth Rivkin

  15. Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California, Santa Cruz, CA, USA

    Eric P. Palkovacs

  16. Louis Calder Center and Department of Biological Sciences, Fordham University, Armonk, NY, USA

    Jason Munshi-South

  17. Applied Wildlife Ecology Lab, Yale School of the Environment, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA

    Nyeema C. Harris

  18. Department of Biological Sciences, Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada

    Kiyoko M. Gotanda

  19. Département de Biologie, Université de Sherbrooke, Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada

    Kiyoko M. Gotanda

  20. Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

    Kiyoko M. Gotanda

  21. Department of Biology, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH, USA

    Sarah E. Diamond

  22. School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

    Simone Des Roches

  23. CEFE, Univ Montpellier, CNRS, EPHE, IRD, Montpellier, France

    Anne Charmantier

  24. Department of Biology, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Leuven, Belgium

    Kristien I. Brans

  25. Department of Biology, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, Belgium

    Kristien I. Brans

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  1. Mark C. Urban
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Contributions

M.C.U., M.A., L.D.M. and K.I.B. conceived of the overall idea. All authors wrote the paper. Y.Z. provided data used in the heat island calculations. A.N.M. developed Fig. 1. M.A. led the research coordination network that brought these authors together.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Mark C. Urban.

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Nature Climate Change thanks Jie Liang, Robert McDonald and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Urban, M.C., Alberti, M., De Meester, L. et al. Interactions between climate change and urbanization will shape the future of biodiversity. Nat. Clim. Chang. (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-024-01996-2

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