Sustainable urban planning needs stronger interdisciplinarity and better co-designing: how ecologists and climatologists can fully leverage climate monitoring data

Research has provided considerable evidence that temperature significantly influences species biology. Its influence is so great that climate corridors have been proposed to assist species in tracking their climatic niche at macroecological scales, reinforcing the importance of accounting for this variable at all scales to address the climatic threat to biodiversity. This threat is exacerbated in cities where artificialization enhances the effect of climate change, to the extent that urban temperatures are a public health concern, with heatwaves causing excess human mortality and having a stark impact on biodiversity. Recent developments in climate monitoring networks enable characterizing the spatiotemporal structure of urban climates in ever greater detail, with many cities already equipped with such networks. The impact of temperature on biodiversity, on the same scale as these networks allows, has never been explored. Characterizing urban climate infrastructures and cool corridors, and thus thermal connectivity for species, would enrich and strengthen existing ecological infrastructures, on the basis of scientific evidence. In this perspective, we discuss how stronger collaborations between ecologists and climatologists could help leverage the full potential of urban climate monitoring networks. We highlight research opportunities they could offer in terms of studying the impact of urban climate on biodiversity and the efforts that need to be pursued to enable co-designing and make interdisciplinary collaborations operational. Such interdisciplinary research on urban climate and its impact is all the more important that its outcomes can help better inform urban planning and mitigate the impacts of climate change on people and biodiversity.