urban areas

Living in a warming world

June 13, 2025 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

As global temperatures rise due to increased greenhouse gas emissions, communities around the world face more frequent and intense heatwaves, droughts, and extreme weather events. These growing climate pressures not only strain infrastructure and natural resources, but also play a critical role in shaping where people live.

Recent projections from the First Street Foundation, which analyzes climate risks across the United States, highlight just how significant these shifts could be. In Sacramento County, California, rising flood risks, declining air quality, and soaring insurance costs could lead to a population decline of up to 28% by 2055. The risk assessment also projects that Monmouth and Ocean counties in New Jersey could each lose more than 30% of their populations. And Fresno County, California, could see nearly half of its residents relocate due to mounting climate-related pressures.

Urban areas like cities, towns, and suburbs are particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Cities become significantly hotter due to the abundance of heat-absorbing surfaces and lack of green spaces, which intensifies heatwaves, worsens conditions for vulnerable populations, and may ultimately force some people to move.

Addressing these challenges requires a combination of climate solutions focused on both mitigation and adaptation. Solutions like expanding green infrastructure with urban parks and green roofs, and promoting sustainable development through energy-efficient buildings and transit-friendly design could all play a vital role in strengthening climate resilience.

As the planet warms, where we live – and how we live there – is rapidly being redefined.

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The 12th National Risk Assessment

Solar on farmland

Photo, posted May 15, 2013, courtesy of Germán Poo-Caamaño via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Parks for bugs

May 27, 2025 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Urban areas can have a variety of green spaces: gardens, parks, and roadside and median plantings. It turns out that these spaces can serve as pollinator refuges.

A study by researchers at the University of British Columbia found that reducing lawn mowing and creating pollinator meadows – essentially parks for bugs – significantly boosts pollinator diversity and creates healthier and more resilient ecosystems.

The 3-year study surveyed pollinators in 18 urban parks across the city of Vancouver. It compared parks where meadows were planted and mowing was restricted with parks that were kept as standard turfgrass lawns.

Parks with meadows saw an immediate increase in pollinator species – from 21 to 47 more wild bee and hoverfly species – compared to parks without meadows. These increases continued over the entire three-year study period.

The researchers identified more than 100 species of wild bees and hoverflies and 35 of them were only found in parks with meadows.

People think of urban landscapes as poor environments for biodiversity, but this study demonstrated that even relatively small changes can have significant impacts. Even a patchwork of small habitats can allow species to move freely and settle into multiple areas quickly.

The researchers had advice for urban residents as well. They suggest that people reduce mowing, plant native flowering shrubs and trees, create diverse habitats that incorporate a variety of plants that bloom at different times, avoid pesticide use, and leave natural nesting sites for pollinators.

Preserving pollinators is an important task and having a few parks for bugs can really help.

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How ‘parks for bugs’ boost pollinators in Vancouver

Photo, posted September 19, 2011, courtesy of Eric Bridiers / U.S. Mission Geneva via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Who’s driving electric?

April 3, 2024 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Electric cars are growing in popularity around the world and are expected to represent 20% of new car sales this year. In some places, they have a much bigger share: 38% in China and a whopping 82% in Norway. Here in the U.S., things are more complicated.

Last year, EVs represented 8.5% of U.S. new car sales while hybrids accounted for an additional 10%. But enthusiasm for plug-in vehicles was by no means universal or consistent across the country or across various segments of the population.

Overall, the West Coast, and especially California, dominated the electric vehicle market. Electric vehicles accounted for more than 30% of new car sales in the San Francisco Bay Area. In Los Angeles, the number was close to 25%.

A number of metro areas elsewhere also had strong EV sales, including Denver, Las Vegas, Washington DC, Austin, and Phoenix. New York City had almost 10% EV registrations.

Americans buying electric cars so far tend to be richer, younger, and more likely to live in urban areas than the average person and are often motivated by environmental concerns. Meanwhile, about half of American adults say they are not likely to consider purchasing an EV as their next car and that figure rises to 70% for Republicans.

Lack of interest in EVs is often based on concerns about the availability of sufficient charging options or high EV prices, although those are dropping. There is also concern about EV efficiency in colder climates, although the Norwegians clearly don’t find it to be a problem.

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Electric Vehicles

Photo, posted October 18, 2021, courtesy of Chris Yarzab via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Sinking Cities | Earth Wise

October 24, 2022 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Sea levels across the globe are rising as a result of the changing climate. Two factors are largely responsible: the melting of ice sheets in the polar regions and the fact that as the oceans get warmer, the water in them expands.

Estimates are that by 2050, there will be over 800 million people living in 570 cities that will be at risk from rising sea levels. The rising waters can drown neighborhoods, put people’s lives at risk, and wreck entire economies. Unless global emissions can be reduced sufficiently, sea levels will continue to rise.

A new study, published in the journal Nature Sustainability by Nanyang Technical University in Singapore in collaboration with the University of New Mexico, ETH Zurich, and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab, has focused on yet another aspect of the threat to coastal cities. They have found that many densely populated coastal cities worldwide are even more vulnerable to sea level rise because much of their land is sinking.

The researchers processed satellite images of 48 cities from 2014 to 2020 using a system called Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar. They found that land subsidence varied on a neighborhood and even individual block level but across all the cities studied, there was a median sinking speed of 6/10” a year. Some places had land that is sinking at 1.7” per year. Meanwhile, the global mean sea-level rise is about .15” per year.

The increasing prevalence of industrial processes such as the extraction of groundwater, and oil and gas, along with the rapid construction of buildings and other urban infrastructure are leading to the sinking of the urban areas.

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Rapid land sinking leaves global cities vulnerable to rising seas

Photo, posted October 24, 2015, courtesy of Jeffrey via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Residential Gardens And Pollinators | Earth Wise

April 2, 2021 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

A new study led by the University of Bristol in the UK measured for the first time how much nectar is produced in urban areas to gauge the role of residential gardens in providing nutrients for pollinators. They discovered that home gardens accounted for the vast majority of the crucial nutrients for pollinators; in fact, some 85% on average.

The study found that gardens generated a daily average of about a teaspoon of the unique sugar-rich liquid found in flowers which pollinators drink for energy. A teaspoon sounds like very little, but it is enough to feed thousands of bees.

The research examined nectar production in four major UK towns and cities and measured nectar production in nearly 200 species of plants. The results were that the nectar supply in urban landscapes is more diverse than in farmland and nature reserves. In addition, gardens are critical because they produce the most nectar per unit area of land and actually cover the largest area of land in the cities studied. In those cities, nearly a third of the land comprised domestic gardens, which is six times the area of parks and 40 times the area of small green allotments.

The upshot of the research is that home gardeners have a huge role to play in pollinator conservation. Without domestic gardens, there would be far less food for pollinators that include bees, wasps, butterflies, moths, flies, and beetles. Thus, it is important for home gardeners to keep planting nectar-rich flowers, mow lawns less often to let dandelions, clovers, and daisies flourish, avoid harmful pesticides, and avoid covering gardens in paving, decking, or artificial turf.

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Pioneering research reveals gardens are secret powerhouse for pollinators

Photo, posted June 23, 2018, courtesy of Wolfferl via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Off-The-Charts Heat

August 9, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

There have been some blistering heatwaves this summer – in Europe, in the Middle East, and here in the United States. A new report by the Union of Concerned Scientists projects that within the next 20 years, millions of people in the United States could be exposed to dangerous “off-the-charts” heat index conditions of 127 degrees Fahrenheit or more. Within 60 years, over one-third of the population could be exposed to such conditions.

Extreme heat kills hundreds of people every year across the U.S. Our bodies’ natural cooling process is affected by humidity and the combined heat index measures the impact of high temperature and high humidity. When the combined heat index reaches 90 degrees, it is considered to be a “dangerous day”, when many groups of people are at serious risk.

Because of the warming climate, the number of dangerous days has been increasing in many parts of the country. Unless there is success in limiting the effects of climate change, by 2050, even relatively temperate cities like Detroit, Minneapolis, New York, and Chicago will have 50 or more dangerous days a year. Places like Dallas, Houston, Phoenix and Miami will experience dangerous days for half of the year.

The National Weather Service’s heat index goes up to 127 degrees Fahrenheit. But in as soon as 20 years, the Southeast, Southern Great Plains, and Midwest will begin to experience days that are so hot that they are “off the charts.”

These extreme conditions could still be avoided with steep, rapid carbon emission reductions. But however successful we are going forward, the US will still be significantly warmer than today with 85 urban areas exposed to 30 or more days with a heat index above 105 degrees, compared with just three urban areas historically.

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‘Off-the-charts’ heat to affect millions in U.S. in coming decades

Photo, posted August 8, 2008, courtesy of Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.