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Science 8 February 2008:
Vol. 319. no. 5864, pp. 756 - 760
DOI: 10.1126/science.1150195
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Review

Global Change and the Ecology of Cities

Nancy B. Grimm,1* Stanley H. Faeth,1 Nancy E. Golubiewski,2 Charles L. Redman,3 Jianguo Wu,1,3 Xuemei Bai,4 John M. Briggs1

Urban areas are hot spots that drive environmental change at multiple scales. Material demands of production and human consumption alter land use and cover, biodiversity, and hydrosystems locally to regionally, and urban waste discharge affects local to global biogeochemical cycles and climate. For urbanites, however, global environmental changes are swamped by dramatic changes in the local environment. Urban ecology integrates natural and social sciences to study these radically altered local environments and their regional and global effects. Cities themselves present both the problems and solutions to sustainability challenges of an increasingly urbanized world.

1 School of Life Sciences, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287–4501, USA.
2 New Zealand Centre for Ecological Economics, Private Bag 11 052, Palmerston North, New Zealand.
3 School of Sustainability, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287–3211, USA.
4 CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems, Canberra ACT 2601, Australia.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: nbgrimm{at}asu.edu

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