Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA.
Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA.
Nat Hum Behav. 2023 Nov;7(11):1869-1877. doi: 10.1038/s41562-023-01688-5. Epub 2023 Sep 7.
Historic segregation and inequality are critical to understanding modern environmental conditions. Race-based zoning policies, such as redlining in the United States during the 1930s, are associated with racial inequity and adverse multigenerational socioeconomic levels in income and education, and disparate environmental characteristics including tree canopy cover across urban neighbourhoods. Here we quantify the association between redlining and bird biodiversity sampling density and completeness-two critical metrics of biodiversity knowledge-across 195 cities in the United States. We show that historically redlined neighbourhoods remain the most undersampled urban areas for bird biodiversity today, potentially impacting conservation priorities and propagating urban environmental inequities. The disparity in sampling across redlined neighbourhood grades increased by 35.6% over the past 20 years. We identify specific urban areas in need of increased bird biodiversity sampling and discuss possible strategies for reducing uncertainty and increasing equity of sampling of biodiversity in urban areas. Our findings highlight how human behaviour and past social, economic and political conditions not just segregate our built environment but may also leave a lasting mark on the digital information we have about urban biodiversity.
历史上的种族隔离和不平等现象是理解现代环境状况的关键。基于种族的分区政策，如 20 世纪 30 年代美国的“红线政策”，与种族不平等以及收入和教育方面的代际不利社会经济水平有关，也与包括城市社区树冠覆盖率在内的不同环境特征有关。在这里，我们量化了红线政策与鸟类生物多样性采样密度和完整性（生物多样性知识的两个关键指标）之间的关系，该研究在美国 195 个城市进行。结果表明，历史上被红线政策划分为低等社区的地区仍然是当今鸟类生物多样性采样最不足的城市地区，这可能会影响保护重点，并使城市环境不平等现象进一步恶化。在过去的 20 年里，红线政策划定的社区等级之间的采样差距增加了 35.6%。我们确定了需要增加鸟类生物多样性采样的特定城市地区，并讨论了减少城市地区生物多样性采样不确定性和增加采样公平性的可能策略。我们的研究结果表明，人类行为以及过去的社会、经济和政治条件不仅使我们的建筑环境隔离，而且可能还会对我们拥有的有关城市生物多样性的数字信息留下持久的印记。
