We have just released a paper reviewing how the urban heat island will change with climate change and urban growth. The paper, 'The impact of urbanization and climate change on urban temperatures: a systematic review' is available here. We found urban growth had a large impact on temperatures, of up to 5⁰C in some areas. Climate change and urban growth together had a larger temperature impact than when either factor was considered alone. We also identified an increased need for further research in this area, as out of the1,574 papers we reviewed, only 8 looked at both climate change and urban growth.
A few weeks ago I attended the 28th International Congress for Conservation Biology in Cartagena (Colombia). ICCB has been, as always, a great conference, and it gave us an opportunity to repeat the session on “What editors and reviewers are (not) expecting to find in your submission”, which we held for the first time in Brisbane last year (see here a previous blog post from Bonnie Mappin). Here is the fantastic panel that joined our session at ICCB. This time we had a larger audience and also a larger editorial panel, including: Mark Burgman (Editor in Chief of Conservation Biology), Gillian Greenough (Executive Editor at Wiley), EJ Milner-Gulland and Mark Schwartz (both Senior Editors of C
The Wilderness Society (TWS) and Environmental Defenders Office held an event on the 21st June, 2017, to discuss land clearing in urban areas of Queensland. As part of this, TWS reached out to GreenFire Science (GFS) to give a presentation on the broader context of Australia’s biodiversity crisis and the impact of land-clearing on Australia’s flora and fauna. Stephen and James presented to 110 locals about the threats to Australian species, the role land-clearing plays in these, some of the work by colleagues at UQ on the rates, drivers and ecological impacts of land-clearing in Australia as well as the electoral analysis we are currently undertaking. See here for more details on the elector