Search

The advantage of living in cities compared with rural areas with respect to height and BMI in children and adolescents has generally become smaller globally from 1990 to 2020, except in sub-Saharan Africa.

Here, the authors conduct a metagenomic-based study of England’s rivers to show that biofilm bacteria are taxonomically and functionally diverse and are key to biogeochemical cycling, highlighting the importance of river biofilm bacteria in understanding and monitoring freshwater ecosystem health.

Wastewater-based surveillance tends to focus on specific pathogens. Here, the authors mapped the wastewater virome from 62 cities worldwide to identify over 2,500 viruses, revealing city-specific virome fingerprints and showing that wastewater metagenomics enables early detection of emerging viruses.

Extensive measurements of the emissions of methane, nitrous oxide and ammonia from wastewater treatment facilities in the USA present higher values than are currently stated in national inventories. The results of this analysis show that greenhouse gas and nitrogenous emissions from the wastewater sector are often overlooked and that their impact on climate should be reassessed.

War has myriad recognized impacts on cities and the environment. This study adds insult to injury, providing spaceborne evidence that the destruction of warfare triggers rapid and substantial increases in urban methane emissions.

Mepolizumab (anti-IL-5 therapy) has been shown to reduce type 2 inflammation in asthma. Here the authors use bulk transcriptomics from nasal samples before and after mepolizumab treatment to assess the changes and associations with treatment outcomes.

This study compiles detailed data on urban green spaces and analyzes the quantity and spatial configuration of green spaces in 371 cities in 11 countries in Latin America. Although there is high heterogeneity, climate seems to be the main determinant of differences in green space amount among cities compared with socioeconomic conditions and the built environment.

Global Burden of Disease estimates show that between 1990 and 2023, the prevalence and burden of drug use disorders, inclusive of amphetamine, cannabis, cocaine and opioid use, have been increasing in high-income countries, particularly in the USA.

This study carries out a scaling analysis comparing the elite wealth concentration of ancient Roman cities with modern urban centers. It found that increased wealth concentration corresponds with increased population sizes across these cities despite being separated by millennia.

Plant traits drive ecosystem dynamics yet are challenging to map globally due to sparse measurements. Here, the authors combine crowdsourced biodiversity observations with Earth observation data to accurately map 31 plant traits at 1 km² resolution.

After compiling literature data on mammal parasites across urban and non-urban areas, the authors show that mammals in urban areas have more parasites overall without disproportionately more zoonotic ones, as is commonly thought.

Research in the tropics is unevenly distributed across regions and biomes. Here, the authors find that moist broadleaf forests account for 73% of all tropical citations but cover 29% of the land area, while drier, climate-vulnerable areas with fewer trees remain under-sampled and under-cited.

Ozone pollution is enhanced by increased non-combustion anthropogenic volatile organic compound emissions during heatwaves, according to atmospheric measurements and modelling of ozone concentrations in a heatwave in Shanghai.

Delayed treatment for malaria increases the risk of severe disease. Here, the authors estimate the rates of treatment delay for children under five in malaria-endemic regions of Africa.

High-resolution satellites reveal major uncertainties in methane emissions from global waste sites, highlighting the need to reconcile observed and reported data, with actionable insights to improve estimates and guide targeted mitigation efforts.

According to Zipf’s law, the population size of a city is inversely proportional to its size rank in any urban system. The authors show how demography explains this law as a time average of balanced migration between cities and how deviations express information about people’s net preferences.

Data provided by Amazonian peoples are used to estimate the value of wild animals as a source of food, including its spatial distribution and nutritional value, providing information that will be key for improved management of forest ecosystems in the region.

Latin America is the world’s most urbanized region and its heterogeneous urban development may impact chronic diseases. In this study, the authors evaluate the association of built environment characteristics with body mass index, obesity, and type 2 diabetes.

Climate change and the rise of cities have broadened what it means to study ecosystems.

China’s rapid e-commerce growth has driven a 12-fold surge in express delivery, yet cross-regional emissions and health impacts remain poorly quantified. Road transport emitted 23.9-Mt CO₂-equivalent and caused approximately 5,100 premature deaths in 2021, revealing stark transit-region health inequities and guiding sustainable logistics pathways.

Wastewater surveillance can help in pandemic or outbreak response. Here, the authors report an unsupervised learning approach to detect emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants from rural and urban wastewater showing it achieves earlier detection than existing methods and detects new variants without clinical testing data.

Cities affect biological evolution, but traditionally researchers focus on the biophysical influence of urban environments. Instead, this Review explores how the social processes of religion, politics and war drive wildlife evolution by shaping urban conditions.

Analysis combining multiple global tree databases reveals that whether a location is invaded by non-native tree species depends on anthropogenic factors, but the severity of the invasion depends on the native species diversity.

Here, using a meta-analysis approach the authors compile a database of microbes hosted by insectivores, showing that a majority of them are viruses, that shrews and hedgehogs particularly contribute to the global virus sharing networks and that insectivores may spread of viruses of potential public health concern.

Estimates from the Global Dietary Database indicated that 2.2 million new type 2 diabetes and 1.2 million new cardiovascular disease cases were attributable to sugar-sweetened beverages worldwide in 2020, with the highest burdens in sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean.

This study assesses the impact of urbanization on drought, finding that city growth is associated with sharp increases in extreme drought. This is especially the case in tropical regions.

Contrary to the view that urbanization is a major driver of the global rise in obesity, the global increase in body-mass index is shown to be mostly due to increases in the body-mass indexes of rural populations.

City-level analysis of data from the SALURBAL project shows vast heterogeneity in life expectancy across cities within the same country, in addition to substantive differences in causes of death among nine Latin American countries, revealing modifiable factors that could be leveraged by municipal-level policies aimed toward improving health in urban environments.

Early life RSV infection contributes to risk of childhood asthma. Here, the authors develop a statistical model to predict age at first RSV infection in the United States based on birthdate, demographics, and RSV surveillance data which could be used to identify groups at risk of chronic respiratory sequalae like asthma.

The lack of income distribution data hinders the study of income inequality, which is critical for sustainable development. This study now provides subnational global datasets to assess the problem and shows rising income levels worldwide and rising inequality for many over the past 30 years.

Estimates from the Global Burden of Disease study reveal declines in chronic respiratory disease mortality between 1990 and 2023—especially during the COVID-19 pandemic—but the burdens on people affected remain substantial.

Recent estimates of sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) intake are generally unavailable. Here the authors show a global SSBs intake of 2.7 servings/week in 2018 in adults (range: 0.7 South Asia, 7.8 Latin America/Caribbean); intakes were higher among males, younger, more educated, and urban adults.

Cities may host surprisingly diverse and functionally distinct biological communities. This global analysis on 5302 vertebrate and invertebrate species finds evidence of 4 trait syndromes in urban animal assemblages, modulated by spatial and geographic factors.

Despite substantial investments in urban stormwater management systems around the world, cities are experiencing soaring impacts that are inconsistent with assumed levels of flood protection. This suggests that there are flaws in existing stormwater design methods and guidelines, which currently do not properly account for the complexity of flood flows in urban landscapes and their interactions with infrastructure and with natural and artificial water bodies.

Extreme heat in Latin America increases road traffic mortality risks, with motorcyclists and bicyclists facing a 27% higher risk on the hottest days. Urban protection measures for vulnerable commuters in cities in the Global South are critical as climate change intensifies heat exposure.

Antimicrobial resistance genes that have been mobilized between bacterial species represent a subset of the naturally occurring resistome. Here, the authors compare the abundance, diversity and geographical patterns of acquired resistance genes with latent resistance genes in global sewage metagenomes.

Phylogeography and phylogenomic analyses of E. coli isolates collected from humans and domesticated and wild animals across 99 households in Nairobi reveal strong intra-household, and lower but detectable inter-household and inter-host, strain-sharing patterns.

Flood management solutions are typically local and do not consider how the space–time connectivity of floods is exacerbated by built infrastructure. Through a case study of the 2014 flood in Southeast Michigan, which flooded where there was no rainfall, this Article examines key factors contributing to urban flooding and the implications of design choices on inundation.

Low-income urban communities are facing infrastructural inequities. This Perspective advocates for an agenda that aims at reorienting infrastructure research by bridging methodological divides, integrating fragmented datasets and actors, and centering engagement with affected communities.

Saito et al. identify sphingosine kinase 1 as a critical regulator of physiological ductus arteriosus closure and pathological supravalvular aortic stenosis through its role in smooth muscle cell proliferation and propose potential therapeutics.

Cities can be organized and viewed many ways, as by neighborhoods, streets and so on. This Perspective argues for integrating multiple scales into urban science through a pointillistic approach.

To investigate inequalities in energy access, Kersey and co-authors conducted a mixed-method study with 25 informal settlements in Kampala, Uganda. They found that despite the expansion of electrical grids in Sub-Saharan Africa, users are connecting to the grid through a range of service arrangements that are highly differentiated and provide inequitable levels of electricity access.

Here, the authors examine the mechanisms behind cheatgrass’s successful invasion of North American ecosystems. Their genetic analyses and common garden experiments demonstrate that multiple introductions and migrations facilitated cheatgrass local adaptation.

Pollution in urban areas causes higher rates of mutation than in unpolluted areas. This Perspective discusses the effects of these mutations on the health, evolutionary fitness and ecology of urban organisms.

This study employs a citizen science approach to identify and classify over 230,000 light sources in German city centers, suburbs and villages. The results underscore the pivotal role of citizen science in expanding knowledge of artificial light emissions and bolstering policymaking efforts to mitigate urban light pollution.