Humans re-shape the environments where they live, with cities being among the most profoundly transformed environments on Earth. New research now shows that these urban environments are altering the way life evolves.

A study led by evolutionary biologists at the University of Toronto Mississauga and including the 91探花 examines whether parallel evolution is occurring in cities all over the world. In findings published March 18 in the journal , the analyzed data collected by 287 scientists in 160 cities in 26 countries, who sampled the white clover plant in their cities and nearby rural areas.

What they found is the clearest evidence yet that humans in general, and cities specifically, are a dominant force driving the evolution of life globally.

鈥淲e鈥檝e long known that we鈥檝e changed cities in pretty profound ways and we鈥檝e dramatically altered the environment and ecosystems,鈥� said co-lead author James Santangelo, a doctoral student at the University of Toronto Mississauga. 鈥淏ut we just showed this happens, often in similar ways, on a global scale.鈥�

The researchers examined white clover because it is one of the few organisms present in almost every city on Earth, providing a tool to understand how urban environments influence evolution. The study illustrates that the environmental conditions in cities tend to be more similar to each other than to nearby rural habitats. In that sense, downtown Toronto is more comparable to downtown Tokyo in many ways than it is to surrounding farmland and forests outside of the city.

In addition to observing global adaptation to cities, researchers identified the genetic basis of that adaptation and the environmental drivers of evolution. White clover produces hydrogen cyanide as both a defense mechanism against herbivores and to increase its tolerance to water stress, and the study found that clover growing in cities typically produce less of it than clover in neighboring rural areas due to repeated adaptation to urban environments.

It is the changes in the presence of herbivores and water stress in cities that is pushing white clover to adapt differently than their rural counterparts.

That finding holds true for cities across various climates, and the implications reach far beyond the humble clover plant.

鈥淚ncreasing evidence shows that urbanization is causing rapid evolution in heritable traits of many plants and animal populations which provide important ecosystem functions that support human well-being, such as nutrient cycling, seed dispersal and biodiversity,鈥� said co-author , 91探花professor of urban design and planning. “Finding a clear signal that cities are altering trait changes across the globe has important implications for ecosystems鈥� adaptive capacity that enables their stability and resilience in the face of rapid global environmental change.鈥�

The information from this study can be used to start developing strategies to better conserve rare species and allow them to adapt to urban environments, researchers said. It can also help experts better understand how to prevent unwanted pests and diseases from adapting to human environments. In collecting more than 110,000 clover samples and sequencing more than 2,500 clover genomes, the team also created a massive dataset for further research.

鈥淭his study is a model to understand how humans change the evolution of life around us. Cities are where people live, and this is the most compelling evidence we have that we are altering the evolution of life in them. Beyond ecologists and evolutionary biologists, this is going to be important for society,鈥� said co-author Rob Ness, an assistant professor of biology at the University of Toronto Mississauga.

Other 91探花co-authors on the study, all doctoral students in the Urban Ecology Research Lab, are Karen Dyson, Tracy Fuentes and Meen Chel Jung.

For more information, contact Alberti at malberti@uw.edu.

This story is adapted from a press release from the University of Toronto Mississauga.

Historian Patricia Ebrey receives Association of Asian Studies’ top award for 2020

The Association of Asian Studies has given 91探花historian its 2020 Award for Distinguished Contributions to Asian Studies. The award, the highest the bestows, honors outstanding scholarship in the field.

Ebrey is the Williams Family Endowed Professor of History. She has written or edited many works on China and East Asia as well as a sourcebook on China for undergraduate teaching. She has written over 70 journal articles and book chapters and her works have been translated into several other languages.

Praising Ebrey for groundbreaking efforts in several areas, the association said in a news release: “By editing or co-editing volumes of scholarly work, and by providing translations and reproductions of primary materials, she has dedicated herself to developing the historical study of China both in terms of research and teaching.”

for the honor at the Association of Asian Studies website.

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91探花political scientist Christopher Parker joins Cascade Public Media board of directors

, 91探花professor of political science, has been chosen to join the board of directors for Cascade Public Media, the nonprofit home of KCTS 9 television and Crosscut.

Parker has taught at the 91探花since 2006 and is the author of two books, “” (with Matt Barreto, 2013) and “” (2009). His next book, planned for this year, is “The Great White Hope: Donald Trump, Race, and the Crisis of American Democracy.”

Parker was one of two new named, along with Holly Mesrobian, a 91探花alumna who is a director of engineering at Amazon Web Services. The appointments were April 28. Also on the Cascade Public Media board is , 91探花professor of law.

“Not only is the world of media changing rapidly, the world itself is changing at a breakneck pace,” Robert Dunlop, CEO of , said of the two new directors. “Their insights will be extremely valuable as we continue to bring the people of our region news and programming that informs and inspires.”

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Terryl Ross receives 2020 social equity award from American Society of Public Administration

The American Society of Public Administration has given , assistant dean of diversity, equity and inclusion in the 91探花College of the Environment, its 2020 Gloria Hobson Nordin Social Equity Award for 2020.

The recognizes lifetime achievement in the cause of social equity. Candidates are evaluated on the consistency, level and duration of their work on social equity as well as the impact of their efforts. The society’s 8,000-some members are practitioners, academics and students.

Ross came to the 91探花in 1992 as a doctoral student in the Educational and Communication Technology Program housed in the College of Education and later created the group Multicultural Organization of Students Actively Involved in Change, or MOSAIC.

“Ross continues to work in diversity and inclusion today as he collaborates with college stakeholders to envision diversity, equity and inclusion efforts across the college,” the association wrote.

The award, established in 2003, is named for a longtime employee of the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity.

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David Montgomery honored by Swedish Society for Anthropology and Geography

The Swedish Society for Anthropology and Geography has awarded , 91探花professor of Earth and space sciences its 2020 for achievements in physical geography. He was honored his work in the field of geomorphology 鈥� the study of the origin and evolution of landforms.

Montgomery has written several popular science books as well as teaching materials and over 200 articles. The society praised his impact on the research community. His last book was “,” published in 2017.

“He has studied everything from the ways that landslides and glaciers influence the height of mountain ranges, to the way that soils have shaped human civilizations now and in the past,” the society wrote in its award announcement.

The was founded in 1878 and is supported mainly by the King of Sweden. Its objective is to promote the development of anthropology, geography and closely related sciences in Sweden and serve as a link between scientists in these disciplines, and the public.

The award, one of two informally referred to as the Nobel prize of geography, is named for the of Swedish explorer , who discovered the Northwest Passage in 1881.

Read more on the College of the Environment .

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In other faculty news:

Openness letter: , 91探花professor of urban design and planning in the College of Built Environments, was one of 31 scientists to sign an open letter to the journal Science calling for more openness in coronavirus modeling. “” was published in Science on May 1.

“A hallmark of science is the open exchange of knowledge, the cosigners wrote. “We strongly urge all scientists modeling the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic and its consequences for health and society to rapidly and openly publish their code 鈥� so that it is accessible to all scientists around the world.”

Seattle Channel meets Indigo Mist: The Seattle Channel recently filmed a visit with the 91探花School of Music faculty members who comprise the improvisational music group : professors , , and , the school’s director 鈥� , artist in residence (and longtime bassist). The school took note in its April newsletter.

“You just let go and let your creativity do its thing,” Vu said in the video, describing the group’s creative approach. Whatever art comes out of that, he said, is “going to make sense 鈥� and it’s going to be uniquely your expression.”

Watch the Youtube video:

Here in what is called the era, humans and our urban environments appear to be driving accelerated evolutionary change in plants, animals, fungi, viruses and more 鈥� changes that could affect key ecosystem functions and thus human well-being. These interactions between evolution and ecology are called “eco-evolutionary feedback.”

The National Science Foundation has awarded a five-year, $500,000 to a multi-institution research network team headed by , 91探花 professor of urban design and planning, to advance understanding of these global eco-evolutionary dynamics.

Alberti is the author or co-author of several papers on the emerging topic, as well as a 2016 book, “Cities that Think Like Planets: Complexity, Resilience, and Innovation in Hybrid Ecosystems” ( 91探花Press).

“Cities are microcosms of the evolutionary changes that are occurring on a planetary scale,” Alberti writes in the grant statement, “and thus provide a natural laboratory to advance our understanding of eco-evolutionary dynamics in a rapidly urbanizing world and聽generate new insights for maintaining biodiversity.”

Human-caused evolutionary changes in plants, animals, fungi, viruses and other organisms can affect nutrient cycling, pollination, seed dispersal, water and air purification and food production. The challenge, Alberti writes, is to understand these mechanisms, “and determine whether these changes might affect ecosystem function at the planetary scale.”

Such a challenge can’t be fully met by any single field, she adds, and calls for a new level of collaboration 鈥� and sharing of data and methods 鈥攁mong evolutionary biologists, ecosystem scientists, urban ecologists, paleoecologists and archaeologists.

Alberti, who also directs the 91探花Urban Ecology Research Lab in the 91探花College of Built Environments, intends to lead the researchers to “perform long-term cross-comparative studies, to synthesize the science, and to explore mechanisms that link urban development patterns to rapid evolution and the potential for those changes to feed back to shape ecosystems.”

Key questions the research network will address are:

• What is the evidence for urban signatures of phenotypic change 鈥� the physical manifestation of genes 鈥� distinct from natural and other anthropogenic, or human-caused drivers?
• To what degree does urban trait change differ among branches of the tree of life?
• To what degree can trait changes be attributed to phenotypic plasticity or to evolutionary change?
• What are the functional consequences of urban-induced evolutionary changes on ecosystems?

Alberti is principal investigator for the new Research Coordination Network under the title “Eco-Evolutionary Dynamics in an Urban Planet: Underlying Mechanisms and Ecosystem Feedbacks.”

Co-principal investigators are of McGill University in Montreal, of the University of Toronto at Mississauga, of Washington University in St. Louis and , of Fordham University. The UW’s , a professor of environmental and forest sciences, is also part of the network.

Other researchers with the network are from Universidad Austral de Chile; Arizona State University; the University of Leuven, Belgium; the University of California, Santa Cruz; the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies; the University of New Mexico; the University of Warsaw and Virginia Commonwealth University.

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For more information, contact Alberti at malberti@uw.edu. Follow her on Twitter: @ma003.

NSF grant # 1840663

A novelist’s thoughts on storytelling, a geologist’s soil restoration strategy, an environmentalist’s memoir, a celebration of Latino music influences, a poet’s meditations on her changing city 鈥�

Yes, and a best-selling author’s latest work, a podcast reborn as a book, a collaboration of world-class violists and even tales of brave Icelandic seawomen 鈥� at this festive time of year, 91探花 faculty creations can make great gifts for the Dawg on your shopping list.

Here鈥檚 a quick look at some gift-worthy books and music created by 91探花talents in the last year or so 鈥� and a reminder of some perennial favorites.

Charles Johnson, “.” Johnson, National Book Award-winning author of “” and longtime professor of English, discusses his art in a book stemming from a year of interviews. “There is winning sanity here,” the New York Times wrote: “Johnson wants his students to be ‘raconteurs always ready to tell an engaging tale,’ not self-preoccupied neurotics.” Published by .

Marisol Berr铆os-Miranda, Shannon Dudley and Michelle Habell-Pall谩n, ““ An extraordinary exhibit at the Smithsonian and Seattle’s Experience Music Project (now Museum of Pop Culture) comes to life as a book, detailing Latino influence on American popular music from salsa to punk, Chicano rock to the Miami sound. Berrios-Miranda is an affiliate associate professor of ethnomusicology, Dudley an associate professor of music and Habell-Pall谩n an associate professor in the Department of Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies. It’s a dual-language volume 鈥� English on the right side, Spanish on the left. And as a bonus the authors have created an American Sabor on iTunes and Spotify; the book flags specific songs with a playlist icon. Published by 91探花 Press.

David R. Montgomery, “.” Montgomery, a professor of Earth and space sciences, won praise for his popular 2007 book “.” Several books later he returned in 2017 with this view of environmental restoration based on three ideas 鈥� “ditch the plow, cover up, grow diversity.” said Montgomery’s well-expressed views “will convince readers that soil health should not remain an under-the-radar issue and that we all benefit from embracing a new philosophy of farming.” Published by .

Margaret Willson, Willson is an affiliate associate professor of anthropology and the Canadian Studies Arctic Program. In her years working as a deckhand she came across historic accounts of a woman sea captain known for reading the weather, hauling in large catches and never losing a crew member in 60 years of fishing. “And yet people in Iceland told me there had been few seawomen in their past, and few in their present,” she said. “I found this strange in a country of such purported gender equality. This curiosity led to the research and all that came from it.” Published by .

Estella Leopold, “.” Leopold is professor emeritus of biology and the youngest daughter of , who wrote the 1949 classic of early environmentalism, “.” She returns to scenes of her Wisconsin childhood in this follow-up, describing her life on the land where her father practiced his revolutionary conservation philosophy. Published by .

David Shields, “.” Shields is a professor of English and the best-selling author of many books, starting with his 1984 novel “.” In 2017 he brought out this collection of essays that the New York Times called “a triumphantly humane book” and him “our elusive, humorous ironist, something like a 21^st century Socrates.” The paper’s praise continued: “He is a master stylist 鈥� and has been for a long time, on the evidence of these pieces from throughout his career. . . All good writers make us feel less alone. But Shields makes us feel better.” Published by .

Joseph Janes, “.” The year 2017 saw Janes’ popular podcast “” become a book under a slightly different title. Janes is an associate professor in the Information School who writes here about the origin and often evolving meaning of historical documents, both famous and less known. Some of his favorite “documents” are Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s fictional list of communists, the Fannie Farmer Cookbook and the backstory to what’s called the Rosie the Riveter poster. Published by .

Frances McCue, Well-known Seattle poet, teacher and self-described “arts instigator,” McCue is a senior lecturer in English. She was a co-founder of Hugo House, a place for writers, and served as its director for 10 years. Those experiences fuel this book of poems about the changing nature of the city. “This is Seattle. A place to love whatever’s left,” she writes. Published by .

Scott L. Montgomery, “.” Scientific research that doesn鈥檛 get communicated effectively to the public may as well not have happened at all, says geoscientist Montgomery in this second volume of a popular 2001 book. A prolific writer, Montgomery is a lecturer in the Jackson School of International Studies. “Communicating is the doing of science,” he adds. “Publication and public speaking are how scientific work gains a presence, a shared reality in the world.鈥澛� Published by .

Odai Johnson, “.” The true cultural tipping point in the run-up to the American Revolution, writes Johnson, a professor in the School of Drama, might not have been the Boston Tea Party or even the First Continental Congress. Rather, he suggests, it was Congress’ 1774 decision to close the British American theaters 鈥� a small act but “a hard shot across the bow of British culture.” Published by .

Here are some recordings from 2017 involving faculty in the 91探花School of Music:

Melia Watras, “.” Music professor Watras offers a collaboration from of world-class violists performing and sharing their own compositions with each other. Her own playing has been described in the press as “staggeringly virtuosic.” Richard Karpen, School of Music director, is among several guests. The title comes from the number of strings on the instruments used: two violas, one violin, and the 14-string viola d’amore. .

Cuong Vu 4-Tet, “.” A live collaboration between Vu, 91探花Jazz Studies chair, and renowned jazz guitarist Bill Frisell, who is an affiliate professor with the School of Music. Recorded in 2016 at Meany Theater, Vu and Frisell were joined by artists in residence Ted Poor on drums and Luke Bergman on bass. Released on .

Craig Sheppard, “.” Sheppard, longtime professor of music and a world-class pianist, plays sonatas and mazurkas by Frederic Chopin recorded live at Meany Theater in February 2017. The Seattle Times said of an earlier Chopin concert of Sheppard’s that his playing featured “exquisite details 鈥� it was playing that revealed layer after layer of music in each piece, as if one were faceting a gemstone. Released on .

Here are some other notable recent UW-authored books:

• Research on poverty and the American suburbs in “,” by Scott Allard, professor in the Evan School of Public Policy & Governance.
• Literature meets science to contemplate the geologic epoch of humans in “,” co-edited by Jesse Oak Taylor, associate professor of English.
• A popular science exploration of machine learning and the algorithms that help run our lives in “,” by Pedro Domingos, professor of computer science and engineering.
• A close look at four of America’s electoral adventures in “” by Margaret O’Mara, professor of history.
• A fully revised second edition of Earth and space sciences professor Darrel Cowan’s popular 1984 book, “.” This 378-page paperback is filled with details about Washington state geology.
• The story of a city’s transition from the Ottoman Empire to Greece in “” by Devin Naar, professor of history and Jewish studies.
• A city that “thinks like a planet” is one both resilient to and ready for the future that the changing Earth will bring, says Marina Alberti, professor in the College of Built Environments in “.
• Todd London, professor and director of the School of Drama, follows the professional theater experiences of 15 actors from the 1995 class of Harvard’s American Repertory Theater in “.”
• Dr. Stephen Helgerson, a 91探花School of Public Health alumnus and physician in preventive medicine for four decades, uses the novella form to tell of the influenza epidemic’s arrival in his state in “.”
• On the 500^th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation, an exploration of faith that results in the common good in 鈥�,鈥� co-authored by Steve Pfaff, professor of sociology.
• Calm down from holiday 鈥� and tech-induced stresses 鈥� by thinking mindfully with “” by communication professor David Levy.

Finally, still-popular and pertinent books from a few years back include the second edition of “” by Jeffrey Ochsner, professor of architecture; “” by Randlett with Frances McCue; “” by Cliff Mass, professor of atmospheric sciences; and the ever-popular “” by Bill Holm, professor emeritus of art history. All of these were published by , which has many other great titles.

They sorted the hypothetical worlds into three types according to a scheme named in 1964 for Soviet astronomer . A Type 1 civilization could manipulate all the energy resources of its home planet (a distant goal yet for Earth) and Type 2 all the energy in its star/planetary system. A super-advanced Type 3 civilization would command the energy of its whole home galaxy. The Kardashev Scale has since become a sort of gold standard for dreaming about possible civilizations beyond Earth.

Now, a team of researchers including of the 91探花 has devised a new classification scheme for the evolutionary stages of worlds based on “non-equilibrium thermodynamics” 鈥� a planet’s energy flow being out of synch, as the presence of life could cause. The categories range from imagined planets with no atmosphere whatsoever to those with an “agency-dominated biosphere” or even a “technosphere,” reflecting the achievements of a vastly advanced, “energy-intensive technological species.”

Their , “Earth as a Hybrid Planet: The Anthropocene in an Evolutionary Astrobiological Context,” was published Sept. 6 in the journal Anthropocene. Lead author is , professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Rochester. Alberti is a professor of urban design and planning in the 91探花College of Built Environments, and director of the college’s Urban Ecology Research Lab.

The new classification system, the researchers say, is a way of thinking about sustainability on a planetary scale in what is being recognized as the epoch 鈥� the geological period of humanity’s significant impact on Earth and its ecosystems. Alberti that humans and the urban areas we create are having a strong, planetwide effect on evolution.

“Our premise is that Earth’s entry into the Anthropocene represents what might, from an astrobiological perspective, be a predictable planetary transition,” they write. “We explore this problem from the perspective of our own solar system and exoplanet studies.

“In our perspective, the beginning of the Anthropocene can be seen as the onset of the hybridization of the planet 鈥� a transitional stage from one class of planetary systems to another.”

That would be, in their scheme, Earth’s possible transition from Class IV 鈥� marked by a thick biosphere and life having some effect on the planet 鈥� to the final Class V, where a planet is profoundly affected by the activity of an advanced, energy-intensive species.

The classification scheme, the researchers write, is based on “the magnitude by which different planetary processes 鈥� abiotic, biotic and technologic 鈥� generate free energy, i.e. energy that can perform work within the system.”

• Class I represents worlds with no atmosphere at all, such as the planet Mercury and the Earth’s moon.
• Class II planets have a thin atmosphere containing , but no current life, such as the current states of planets Mars and Venus.
• Class III planets have perhaps a thin biosphere and some biotic activity, but much too little to “affect planetary drivers and alter the evolutionary state of the planet as a whole.” No current examples exist in the solar system, but early Earth may have represented such a world 鈥� and possibly early Mars, if life ever flickered there in the distant past.
• Class IV planets have a thick biosphere sustained by photosynthetic activity and life has begun strongly affecting the planetary energy flow.

Alberti said, “The discovery of seven new exoplanets orbiting the relatively close star TRAPPIST-1 forces us to rethink life on Earth. It opens the possibility to broaden our understanding of coupled system dynamics and lay the foundations to explore a path to long-term sustainability by entering into a cooperative ecological-evolutionary dynamic with the coupled planetary systems.”

The researchers write, “Our thesis is that the development of long-term sustainable, versions of an energy-intensive civilization must be seen on a continuum of interactions between life and its host planet.”

The classifications lay the groundwork, they say, for future research on the “co-evolution” of planets along that continuum.

“Any world hosting a long-lived energy-intensive civilization must share at least some similarities in terms of the thermodynamic properties of the planetary system,” they write. “Understanding these properties, even in the broadest outlines, can help us understand which direction we must aim our efforts in developing a sustainable human civilization.”

In other words, they added, “If one does not know where one is going, it’s hard to get there.”

Co-author on the paper is of the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Jena, Germany.

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For more information contact Alberti at 206-616-8667 or malberti@uw.edu (Twitter: ) or Frank at 585-275-1717 or afrank@pas.rochester.edu (Twitter: ).

A new multi-institution study led by the 91探花 that examines 1,600 global instances of phenotypic change 鈥� alterations to species’ observable traits such as size, development or behavior 鈥� shows more clearly than ever that urbanization is affecting the genetic makeup of species that are crucial to ecosystem health and success.

Their was published Jan. 2 in the . Lead author is , professor of urban design and planning and director of the in the 91探花.

“We found a clear urban signal of phenotypic change 鈥� and greater phenotypic change in urbanizing systems compared to natural and non-urban anthropogenic, or human-created systems,” Alberti said.

She said the findings open new opportunities for advancing our understanding of the role of humans in Earth’s evolution: “By explicitly linking urban development to heritable traits that affect ecosystem function, we can begin to map the implications of human-induced trait changes for ecological and human well-being.”

Rapid urbanization, the researchers write, poses new challenges for species, some of which will adapt or relocate while others go extinct. With this study, they sought to learn whether signs of human-caused change could be detected across species in urban ecosystems worldwide, and to what extent humans and our cities and societies might be speeding up these changes.

They analyzed 1,600 observations of phenotypic change across multiple regions and ecosystems worldwide, in a geo-referenced database, looking to discriminate between such human-caused signals and natural baselines and “non-urban drivers.”

They also assessed the relative impact of several human-caused “urban disturbances,” including the acidification and pollution of lake habitats, the relocation of animals, heat and effluent associated with a power plant, long-term harvesting of certain medicinal plants 鈥� even the apparent effects of global warming on the reproductive patterns of birds.

They propose that “urban-driven contemporary evolution” will affect sustainability from the level of the urban ecosystem to the planetary scale.

“The significance of these changes is that they affect the functioning of ecosystems,” Alberti said. “They may inhibit the ability of seeds to disperse, cause exposure to infectious diseases, or even change the migratory patterns of some species.”

Some examples of this include:

• human-caused global warming is prompting the seasonal onset of reproduction to occur earlier in 65 species of migratory birds in Western Europe
• the use of galvanized (zinc-coated) transmission towers creates “novel habitats” characterized by high zinc tolerance in multiple plant species
• the size of brown trout is being affected by fish ladders, which subsequently affects predators and prey

Alberti’s 91探花co-authors are , professor of environmental and forest sciences, and Victoria Hunt of the Department of Urban Design and Planning.聽

Marzluff said, “Our findings of rapid and substantial adjustment by many plants and animals to the challenges of living in an increasingly urban world demonstrate the power of natural selection where we live, work, worship and play.”

But he added that the research also offers hope to those interested in conserving biological diversity: “Certainly many species have been, and will continue to be, extinguished by human action, but we reveal how others are evolving the necessary strategies and physical characteristics to coexist with humanity.”

The research, Alberti concluded, calls for a new collaboration among evolutionary biologists, conservation biologists and urban scientists to better understand how humans may affect evolutionary processes and to inform conservation strategies to steer such changes toward a desirable future.

Other co-authors are Cristian Correa of the Universidad Austral de Chile; Andrew Hendry of McGill University; Eric Palkovacs and Travis Apgar of the University of California, Santa Cruz; Kiyoko Gotanda of the University of Cambridge; and Yuyu Zhou of Iowa State University.

The research was funded by the MacArthur Foundation as well as the National Commission for Scientific and Technological Research and National Fund for Scientific and Technological Development, in Chile.

Members of this research team on the theme of human influences on evolution. The summary to that series recalls Charles Darwin’s century-old comment on evolution that “we see nothing of these slow changes in progress, until the hand of time has marked the long lapse of ages.”

The authors of the series added: “Now, however, we have a completely different view. Rapid evolution is occurring all around us all the time. Many of the most extreme examples of rapid evolution are associated with human influences, leading to the oft-repeated assertion that humans are ‘the world’s greatest evolutionary force.'”

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For more information, contact Alberti at 206-616-8667 or malberti@uw.edu, or Marzluff at 206-616-6883 or corvid@uw.edu.

Grant numbers: 14-106477-000-USP (MacArthur Foundation), CONICYT-PAI 82130009 (National Commission for Scientific and Technological Research) and FONDECYT 11150990 (National Fund for Scientific and Technological Development)

is a professor in the , which is part of the 91探花 . Alberti directs the college’s and the Graduate School鈥檚 interdisciplinary doctoral program in urban design and planning.

She answered some questions about her new book, “,” which was published in July by 91探花 Press.

This book seems a summing-up of elements of your career so far 鈥� including your views on the powerful effect of humans on ecosystems 鈥� as well as the work of many others. How long was this book in the making and how did it come about?

M.A.: I have been curious, since my early days as a student, about the role of imagination in scientific thinking. I believe that scientific progress is achieved through the discipline of observing and listening 鈥� without judgment 鈥� to both what it is and what can be. The book begins by imagining the future.

The way we think about the future has significant implications for the choices we make in the present 鈥� the strategies we devise to address new emergent problems. Imagine New York City 鈥� or London or Beijing or Ho Chi Minh City, or Seattle. Our present decisions as citizens and as planners will depend on whether we envision a future that follows the current trajectory of development, characterized by continuing growth; or one that predicts crossed thresholds, tipping points, and irreversible regime shifts triggered by climate change; or whether we imagine that we will be able to adapt to climate change by investing in green energy and infrastructure.

And how would our decisions differ, if we could imagine our city able to reinvent itself by redefining its relationships with natural processes?

I suggest that by navigating through time, we can uncover our biases about what we know and challenge the too-often-implied notion that scientific discovery has reached its end or that we鈥檝e exhausted our capacity to learn. I propose that we can learn from the future. And more importantly, we can learn by asking what it is that we are unable to imagine.

What do you mean by “navigating through time” in this context?

M.A.: You do not need to travel very far in time to uncover the bias that past observations can place on our predictions. Current climate variables are very well outside the historical variability. Humans are changing the environment outside the range of values and conditions that Earth’s ecosystems have experienced throughout their evolution. And our past experience can also limit our imagination. Imagine you were among the first Seattle dwellers. Could have you imagined the current trajectories of urban growth?

The emergence of a new urban science that aims to uncover universal rules of how cities work and the remarkable availability of real time data and new sensors are key to envisioning such transformation. But science and data answer questions we are able to formulate. To build sustainable, resilient cities requires that we both refine our predictions and expand our imagination. Expanding the imagination is what made Einstein envision gravitational waves one hundred years before they were detected.

Your notion of “thinking like a planet” builds on ecologist Aldo Leopold’s idea to expand the scale of land conservation by “thinking like a mountain.” How have you built on that, and what does it mean, briefly, for a city to “think like a planet”?

M.A.: I suggest that we need a new ethic: to “build cities that think like planets,” so that we might face the challenge of cities in the context of planetary change. For Aldo Leopold, “thinking like a mountain” meant expanding the spatial and temporal scales of land conservation by incorporating a mountain’s dynamics. I suggest that we need to build on Hirsch and Norton’s idea of “thinking like a planet” () to expand the time and space dimensions of urban design and planning to the planetary scale.

Cities that think like planets are cities:

• where humans are key players in nature’s game
• where humans bio-cooperate with, not simply bio-mimic, natural processes
• that operate on planetary spatial and time scales
• that rely on “wise” citizens, not simply smart technologies

You depict a hypothetical city planner saying it’s helpful to imagine varied futures, even knowing none will come true: “As we prepare our city for every collectively imagined scenario, we shape ourselves into a resilient city able to withstand whatever our ultimate reality delivers.” What role might human creativity and ingenuity play in preparing cities to meet the future?

M.A.: Cities are where innovation has historically occurred. The key role that cities have played in the development of science and technology and in the generation of inventions and innovations 鈥� intellectual and material, cultural and political, institutional and organizational 鈥� has been well documented by scholars in a diversity of disciplines.

While rapid urbanization accelerates and expands human impacts on the global ecosystem, it is the close interactions of diverse peoples that make cities the epicenter of both social transformation and technological innovation. Yet innovation is tightly linked to the capacity of urbanizing regions to adapt and evolve in a changing environment. For human civilization to achieve its full potential, it is essential to place technological innovation and social transformation in the context of local and global environmental change.

“If we are to think like a planet, we must deal with scales and events that are far removed from the everyday human experience,” you write. This implies “expanding the scale of design and planning” from decades to centuries, and from a human scale to considering ecologies of whole regions. Do examples already exist of this type of long-term, unfettered planning?

M.A.: Throughout history, people in societies faced with the prospect of deforestation or other environmental changes have successfully engaged in long-term thinking. Consider, for example, the Tokugawa shoguns, Inca emperors, New Guinea highlanders and 16th-century German landowners or, more recently, the Chinese efforts at reforestation and their bans on logging of native forests.

Many European countries and the United States have dramatically reduced their air pollution while increasing their use of energy and their combustion of fossil fuels. Humans have the intellectual and moral capacity to do even more when they tune in to challenging problems and engage in solving them.

Several Northern European cities have adopted successful strategies to cut greenhouse gases, combining these strategies with innovative approaches that allow the cities to adapt to the inevitable consequences of climate change.

One example is the , which lays out a path for Copenhagen to become the world’s first carbon neutral city through efficient zero-carbon mobility and building. They鈥檙e building a subway that will place metro stations within 650 yards of 85 percent of the city’s residents. Nearly three-quarters of Copenhagen鈥檚 emissions reductions will be realized as people transition to less carbon-intensive ways to produce heat and electricity: biomass, wind, geothermal and solar. Copenhagen is also one of the first cities to adopt a climate adaptation plan that will reduce vulnerability to the extreme storms and rising seas expected over the next century.

The Netherlands, also, is exploring ways to allow people to live with the inevitable floods. Strategies include floating communities and adaptive beach protections that take advantage of natural processes. New York is setting an example for long-term planning too, by combining adaptation and transformation strategies into plans for building a resilient city.

What do you think cities that “think like planets” will look like?

M.A.: Although I have ventured to pose this question in the book, I do not attempt to provide an answer. In fact, no single individual can. The answer resides in the collective imagination and evolving behaviors of peoples of diverse cultures who inhabit the vast array of regions across the planet. Humanity has the capacity to think in the long term.

A city that thinks like a planet is not built on previously set design solutions or planning strategies. Nor can we assume that the best solution would work equally well across the world, regardless of place and time. Instead, such a city must be built on principles that expand its drawing board and on collaborative actions to include planetary processes and scales that integrate humanity into the evolution of Earth.

Such a view acknowledges the history of the planet in every element or building block of the urban fabric 鈥� from the skyscraper to the sidewalk, from a backyard to the central park, from residential side streets to mega-highways.

It is a view that is curious about understanding who we are and about taking advantage of novel patterns, processes and feedbacks that emerge from human and natural interactions.

It is a city grounded in the here and the now and simultaneously in the different temporal and spatial scales of human and natural processes that govern the Earth. A city that thinks like a planet is simultaneously resilient and ready to change.

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For more information about “Cities that Think Like Planets,” contact Alberti at malberti@uw.edu. Follow her on Twitter at .

That humans and the cities we build affect the ecosystem and even drive some evolutionary change in species’ traits is already known. The signs are small but striking: in cities are getting bigger and in rivers are getting smaller; in urban areas are growing tamer and bolder, outcompeting their country cousins.

What’s new is that these evolutionary changes are happening much more quickly than previously thought, and have potential impacts on ecosystem function on a contemporary scale. Not in the distant future, that is 鈥� but now.

A new by of the 91探花 College of Built Environments’ published this month in the journal Trends in Ecology & Evolution suggests that if human-driven evolutionary change affects the functioning of ecosystems 鈥� as evidence is showing 鈥� it “may have significant implications for ecological and human well-being.”

Alberti, a professor of urban design and planning, said that until recently it was assumed that evolutionary change would take too long to affect ecological processes quite so immediately. Such thinking has prevented evidence from coming together “in a way that can only emerge through a cross-disciplinary lens,” she said, observing the interactions between humans and natural processes.

“We now have evidence that there is rapid evolution. These changes may affect the state of the environment now. This is what’s called eco-evolutionary feedback.

“Cities are not simply affecting biodiversity by reducing the number and variety of species that live in urban habitats,” Alberti said. Humans in cities are causing organisms to undergo accelerated evolutionary changes “that have effects on ecosystem functions such as biodiversity, nutrient cycling, seed dispersal, detoxification, food production and ultimately on human health and well-being.”

In the paper, Alberti systematically reviews evidence of “human signatures,” or documented examples of human-caused trait changes in fish, birds, mammals and plants, and their effects on ecosystem function.

In addition to the shrinking salmon, she cites earthworms with increased tolerance to metals, seeds of some plants dispersing less effectively and a type of urban mouse that is a “critical host” for the ticks that carry Lyme disease, leading to spikes in human exposure to the illness.

Songbirds are becoming tamer and bolder and also are changing their tunes to ensure their acoustic signals are not lost in the noisy urban background. European blackbirds are becoming sedentary and have changed their migratory behavior in response to urbanization.

Humans in cities cause these changes through a variety of ways, Alberti said. Our urbanization alters and breaks up natural vegetation patterns, introduces toxic pollutants and novel disturbances such as noise and light and increases the temperature. Human presence also changes the availability of resources such as food and water, altering the life cycle of many species.

Alberti said the emerging evidence prompts serious questions with implications for the focus and design of future studies:

• Can global rapid urbanization indeed affect the course of Earth’s evolution?
• Is urbanization moving the planet closer to an environmental tipping point on the scale of the that introduced oxygen into the atmosphere more than 2 billion years ago?
• Might different patterns of urbanization alter the effect of human action on eco-evolution?

Still, Alberti said hers is not a “catastrophic” perspective, but one that highlights both the challenges and the unique opportunity that humans have in shaping the evolution of planet Earth.

Ecosystems in urban environments are a sort of hybrid, she said: “It is their hybrid nature that makes them unstable, but also capable of innovating.” She explores the theme further in a book to be published in spring 2016, titled “Cities as Hybrid Ecosystems.”

“We can drive urbanizing ecosystems to collapse 鈥� or we can consciously steer them toward a resilient and sustainable future,” Alberti said. “The question is whether we become aware of the role we are playing.”

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For more information, contact Alberti at 206-295-7985 or malberti@uw.edu. Twitter: @ma003.