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Abstract: The geographic variability and uneven distribution of climate-related impacts in urban environments pose serious challenges to achieving social-ecological resilience and environmental justice. There are no generalizable solutions for the anticipated climate challenges facing urban environments, which vary from increased frequency and intensity of extreme weather events to flooding, heat waves, droughts, and worsening air quality. Densely populated coastal urban areas, like Long Beach, California, are further exposed to sea level rise, coastal erosion, and saltwater intrusion. In response, ecosystem-based adaptation plans have gained traction in the scientific literature and policy circles as viable, multi-beneficial strategies to build urban resilience to withstand anticipated climate threats. Green infrastructure (GI) offers flexible, place-based solutions and as such, has surged in popularity as an urban planning strategy, reflecting the focus of planners and policy-makers to design and implement location-specific interventions. Utilizing a mixed-methods approach, this empirical case study analyzes the spatial distribution and projected intensity of climate-related impacts in Long Beach, California. Integrating geospatial data, surveys, and key informant interviews, this study explores citizen perception of climate risk and desirability of GI solutions to increase adaptive capacity across two high risk communities with unevenly distributed biophysical and social vulnerabilities.
This open access book introduces the function, implementation and governance of green infrastructure in Japan and other countries where lands are geologically fragile and climatologically susceptible to climate change. It proposes green infrastructure as an adaptation strategy for climate change and biodiversity conservation. In the face of climate change, dams, levees and floodways built as disaster prevention facilities do not sufficiently function against extraordinary events such as mega-floods and tsunami disasters. To prevent those disasters and loss of biodiversity in various ecosystems, we should shift from conventional hard measures to more adaptive strategies using various functions that natural and semi-natural ecosystems provide. Green infrastructure is an interconnected network of waterways, wetlands, woodlands, wildlife habitats and other natural areas that support native species, maintain natural ecological processes, sustain air and water resources and contribute to the health and quality of life for communities and people. Green infrastructure has mainly been discussed from adaptation strategy perspectives in cities and urban areas. However, to protect cities, which are generally situated at downstream lower elevations, we explore the preservation and restoration of forests at headwater basins and wetlands along rivers from a catchment perspective. In addition, the quantitative examination of flood risk, biodiversity, and social-economic benefits described in this book brings new perspectives to the discussion. The aim of this book is to accelerate the transformative changes from gray-based adaptation strategies to green- or hybrid-based strategies to adapt to climate change. The book provides essential information on the structure, function, and maintenance of green infrastructure for scientists, university students, government officers, and practitioners.
This book aims to cover most subject areas of green infrastructure such as components, multi-functionality, and integration to build environment, contribution to urban sustainability, sustainable and smart city development, urban climate change nexus, green buildings and rating systems, economic assessment, and quantification of green infrastructure. The impending climate crisis, as well as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, has highlighted the importance of green infrastructure in and around cities, prompting a call for more functional and sustainable urban planning and design. A number of recent studies have shown that green infrastructure provides a wide range of ecosystem functions and services critical to human well-being and urban sustainability, which is especially important during climatic and health crises. In this book, the authors emphasize the importance of existing green infrastructure in coping with climate change-induced stresses, such as increasing climate variability and extreme temperature and precipitation events, as well as contributing to urban dwellers' physical and mental health. Green infrastructure, in both cases, plays a significant role in providing urban areas with resilience capacity, which is critical to urban sustainability. The authors also emphasize the importance of expanding and improving green infrastructure, particularly in vulnerable areas, through integrative and participatory processes. Appropriate integration of green-gray infrastructure and development of climate resilient cities is the core theme of this publication. Further, it emphasizes sustainable development which has become an imperative requirement to the world to move fore and climate change-built environment nexus, the most critical global crisis. Though several books were published globally on the green infrastructure and urban resilience individually, books are rarely published combining both disciplines. This book identifies and addresses the gap through comprehensively discussing on both interlinked areas which is essential for the sustainable urban development. Further, it explores on urban climate resilience, urban sprawl, urbanization, resilience drivers, essentials of city resilience, policy implications, challenges, and future perspectives. This book is a useful fundamental guide in practical applications of green infrastructure in built environment in sustainability context. Further, it enlightens on the significance of transforming the conventional building construction trend to sustainable urban planning designs and building development, exploring on the strategic pathway on building urban climate resilience while signifying the importance of healthy built environment through discussing on the nexus between climate change and built environment.
As global climate change proliferates, so too do the health risks associated with the changing world around us. Called for in the President’s Climate Action Plan and put together by experts from eight different Federal agencies, The Impacts of Climate Change on Human Health: A Scientific Assessment is a comprehensive report on these evolving health risks, including: Temperature-related death and illness Air quality deterioration Impacts of extreme events on human health Vector-borne diseases Climate impacts on water-related Illness Food safety, nutrition, and distribution Mental health and well-being This report summarizes scientific data in a concise and accessible fashion for the general public, providing executive summaries, key takeaways, and full-color diagrams and charts. Learn what health risks face you and your family as a result of global climate change and start preparing now with The Impacts of Climate Change on Human Health.
This open access book addresses the way in which urban and urbanizing regions profoundly impact and are impacted by climate change. The editors and authors show why cities must wage simultaneous battles to curb global climate change trends while adapting and transforming to address local climate impacts. This book addresses how cities develop anticipatory and long-range planning capacities for more resilient futures, earnest collaboration across disciplines, and radical reconfigurations of the power regimes that have institutionalized the disenfranchisement of minority groups. Although planning processes consider visions for the future, the editors highlight a more ambitious long-term positive visioning approach that accounts for unpredictability, system dynamics and equity in decision-making. This volume brings the science of urban transformation together with practices of professionals who govern and manage our social, ecological and technological systems to design processes by which cities may achieve resilient urban futures in the face of climate change.
The book will serve as a guide for local governments and private enterprises as they navigate the unchartered waters of investing in climate change adaptation and resilience. Not only does it identify potential funding sources but also presents a roadmap for asset management and public finance processes.
This book focuses on urban "green infrastructure" – the interconnected web of vegetated spaces like street trees, parks and peri-urban forests that provide essential ecosystem services in cities. The green infrastructure approach embodies the idea that these services, such as storm-water runoff control, pollutant filtration and amenities for outdoor recreation, are just as vital for a modern city as those provided by any other type of infrastructure. Ensuring that these ecosystem services are indeed delivered in an equitable and sustainable way requires knowledge of the physical attributes of trees and urban green spaces, tools for coping with the complex social and cultural dynamics, and an understanding of how these factors can be integrated in better governance practices. By conveying the findings and recommendations of COST Action FP1204 GreenInUrbs, this volume summarizes the collaborative efforts of researchers and practitioners from across Europe to address these challenges.
Cities have experienced an unprecedented rate of growth in the last decade. More than half the world's population lives in urban areas, with the U.S. percentage at 80 percent. Cities have captured more than 80 percent of the globe's economic activity and offered social mobility and economic prosperity to millions by clustering creative, innovative, and educated individuals and organizations. Clustering populations, however, can compound both positive and negative conditions, with many modern urban areas experiencing growing inequality, debility, and environmental degradation. The spread and continued growth of urban areas presents a number of concerns for a sustainable future, particularly if cities cannot adequately address the rise of poverty, hunger, resource consumption, and biodiversity loss in their borders. Intended as a comparative illustration of the types of urban sustainability pathways and subsequent lessons learned existing in urban areas, this study examines specific examples that cut across geographies and scales and that feature a range of urban sustainability challenges and opportunities for collaborative learning across metropolitan regions. It focuses on nine cities across the United States and Canada (Los Angeles, CA, New York City, NY, Philadelphia, PA, Pittsburgh, PA, Grand Rapids, MI, Flint, MI, Cedar Rapids, IA, Chattanooga, TN, and Vancouver, Canada), chosen to represent a variety of metropolitan regions, with consideration given to city size, proximity to coastal and other waterways, susceptibility to hazards, primary industry, and several other factors.
Climate Change and Cities bridges science-to-action for climate change adaptation and mitigation efforts in cities around the world.
This long-anticipated reference and sourcebook for CaliforniaÕs remarkable ecological abundance provides an integrated assessment of each major ecosystem typeÑits distribution, structure, function, and management. A comprehensive synthesis of our knowledge about this biologically diverse state, Ecosystems of California covers the state from oceans to mountaintops using multiple lenses: past and present, flora and fauna, aquatic and terrestrial, natural and managed. Each chapter evaluates natural processes for a specific ecosystem, describes drivers of change, and discusses how that ecosystem may be altered in the future. This book also explores the drivers of CaliforniaÕs ecological patterns and the history of the stateÕs various ecosystems, outlining how the challenges of climate change and invasive species and opportunities for regulation and stewardship could potentially affect the stateÕs ecosystems. The text explicitly incorporates both human impacts and conservation and restoration efforts and shows how ecosystems support human well-being. Edited by two esteemed ecosystem ecologists and with overviews by leading experts on each ecosystem, this definitive work will be indispensable for natural resource management and conservation professionals as well as for undergraduate or graduate students of CaliforniaÕs environment and curious naturalists.