报告题目：Climate Chang, Neighborhood Ecosystems, and Human Health in Phoenix, Arizona U.S.A美国亚利桑那州凤凰城的气候变化、社区生态系统以及人类健康研究

主讲人：Prof Sharon L. Harlan

主持人：象伟宁

开始时间：2012-6-6 13:00

地址：理科大楼A508

报告人简介：

Sharon Harlan is an associate professor of sociology and senior sustainability scientist at Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona U.S.A. Her research is on interdisciplinary problems of social and environmental inequity brought about by rapid urbanization in the Phoenix, Arizona metropolitan region. She is the principal investigator of a National Science Foundation project examining urban vulnerability to climate change as a dynamic feature of coupled natural and human systems that differentially place landscapes and people at risk from extreme heat. This study continues her collaborative, interdisciplinary studies on spatial variation in the urban heat island and the implications of climate change for heat-related health inequalities. Harlan is a member of the American Sociological Association’s Task Force on Global Climate Change and the Advisory Panel of the Research Applications Laboratory at the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

报告摘要：

Climate change can be understood as a consequence of human-ecosystem interactions across spatial scales that range from global to local. Through interactions with local ecosystems, people transform the natural environment into built environments that are replete with many socioeconomic inequalities. These inequalities, in turn, have feedback effects on the exposure of different social groups to climate-related health hazards, such as extreme heat.  Exposure to the urban heat island and heat waves of increasing frequency and intensity are amplified in areas of concentrated poverty that have less capacity to cope with or adapt to climate change. In this presentation, I will describe my collaborative research with ecologists, geoscientists, and health scientists on variability in summer temperature in the Phoenix metropolitan area and how the pattern is related to different socio-ecological characteristics and health outcomes in urban neighborhoods.