Читать книгу Urban Ecology and Global Climate Change - Группа авторов - Страница 21

Climate change is the most challenging environmental change the whole humanity is facing nowadays (Niemelä 2014). It affects both the biotic and abiotic components of the urban ecosystems. The impact of climate change may become more severe with the UHI effects, particularly for the ageing and sensitive urban populations (UN 2011). Thus, climate change and rapid urbanisation are considered as the two major challenges the world is going through recently (Yu et al. 2017). Intensive land‐use change and high consumption of fossil fuels for different purposes have resulted in the substantial GHGs emissions (~78%) from the urban ecosystems which further contribute to the global climate change (Kattel et al. 2013; Weissert et al. 2014; Mitchell et al. 2018). Sustainability of the urban development, and C and energy metabolism are emerging topics in the light of climate change scenario (Wang et al. 2021). Climate change is affecting the urban ecosystems in different ways such as by increasing the UHI effect, reducing the ecosystem services provided by the natural systems, occurrence of extreme events such as floods and droughts, wildfires, diseases, and health problems (Niemelä et al. 2010; Ma et al. 2020; Verma et al. 2020b). Thus, there is a need for proper land‐use planning and improved infrastructural resilience for reducing the urban vulnerability to the extreme environmental events occurring (and expected to intensify) because of climate change‐urbanisation nexus in the near future (Green et al. 2016; Ma et al. 2020). Moreover, there is a need of transdisciplinary research including both the natural and social sciences along with the major stakeholders for the climate change mitigation (Niemelä 2014). A brief insight on the impact of climate change on urban ecosystems has been given in the following sub‐sections.