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Timon McPhearson is an American urban ecologist, researcher, academic and author. He is Professor of Urban Ecology at The New School and the founder and director of its Urban Systems Lab. McPhearson is known for his interdisciplinary research on the interacting social-ecological-technological processes that drive urban system dynamics and impact human well-being. He is a Research Fellow at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies and Stockholm Resilience Centre. McPhearson received the 2023 Sustainability Science Award from the Ecological Society of America.

Academic background

McPhearson received a B.S. in Environmental Biology from Taylor University 1997, and then a PhD in ecology, Evolution, and Natural Resources from Rutgers University in 2004. In 2008, he finished his Postdoctoral research in Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Biology (E3B) from the Earth Institute at Columbia University.

Career

From 2003 to 2005, McPhearson worked as a biodiversity scientist for the Center for Biodiversity and Conservation at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH). And from 2004 to 2009, he worked as a scientist for the Network of Conservation Educators and Practitioners at the AMNH, including as a scientific advisor at Science Bulletins, an original production of the National Center for Science Literacy, Education, and Technology (NCSLET), which is also a part of the Department of Education at AMNH.

In 2016, McPhearson co-founded the Future Earth Urban Knowledge Network, an international network of multidisciplinary researchers and innovators working on resolving cumbersome urban problems worldwide and served as co-chair until 2021.

From 2019 to 2021, McPhearson consulted for UN-HABITAT, CGIAR's Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security, the Green Climate Fund (GCF) and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).

During the COVID-19 pandemic, and from 2020 to 2022, McPhearson was a member at the NYC Mayor's Office of Resiliency Rapid Research and Assessment Initiative on COVID-19 and a partner at NYC Mayor's Office of Data Analytics and the Mayor's Office of Policy and Planning, COVID Recovery Data Partnership.

McPhearson has been an adviser at the World Resources Institute, Ross Center for Sustainable Cities since 2020, an inaugural member of the World Economic Forum (WEF)'s Global Commission on BiodiverCities since 2021, and member of The New School's Zolberg Institute's Cities and Human Mobility Research Collaborative since 2020 and Tishman Environment and Design Center at The New School since 2016.

McPhearson contributed to the Intergovernmental Panel on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) first global assessment as a contributing author from 2018 to 2020, and a Lead Author for Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report (AR6).

Academia

From 2008 to 2009, McPhearson was a Visiting assistant professor of ecology at Columbia University's Earth Institute.

From 2008 to 2016, McPhearson was an assistant professor of Urban Ecology at The New School. He was tenured at associate professor level in 2016 and appointed as Full Professor in 2021.

In 2015, McPhearson founded the Urban Systems Lab at The New School and has been serving as its director, and from 2015 to 2017, he served as a chair of the Environmental Studies Program at The New School.

In 2017, McPhearson was a Visiting Research Fellow at Humboldt University. He has also been serving as a Senior Research Fellow at both the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies and at Stockholm University's Stockholm Resilience Center since 2017.

In 2021, McPhearson became a Faculty Affiliate at the Beijer Institute of Ecological Economics, Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

Bibliography

Books

• Urban Planet: Knowledge towards Sustainable Cities, Cambridge University Press (2018) ISBN 9781316647554 doi:10.1017/9781316647554
• Resilient Urban Futures, Springer-Nature (2021) ISBN 978-3-030-63130-7 doi:10.1007/978-3-030-63131-4
• Nature-Based Solutions for Cities, Edward Elgar Publishing (2023) ISBN 9781800376755 doi:10.4337/9781800376762

Select publications

• Gómez-Baggethun, Erik, Åsa Gren, David N. Barton, Johannes Langemeyer, Timon McPhearson, Patrick O’farrell, Erik Andersson, Zoé Hamstead, and Peleg Kremer. "Urban ecosystem services." Urbanization, biodiversity and ecosystem services: Challenges and opportunities: A global assessment (2013): 175–251. doi:10.1007/978-94-007-7088-1_11
• McPhearson, Timon, Steward TA Pickett, Nancy B. Grimm, Jari Niemelä, Marina Alberti, Thomas Elmqvist, Christiane Weber, Dagmar Haase, Jürgen Breuste, and Salman Qureshi. "Advancing urban ecology toward a science of cities." BioScience 66, no. 3 (2016): 198–212. doi:10.1093/biosci/biw002
• Bennett, Elena M., Martin Solan, Reinette Biggs, Timon McPhearson, Albert V. Norström, Per Olsson, Laura Pereira et al. "Bright spots: seeds of a good Anthropocene." Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 14, no. 8 (2016): 441–448. doi:10.1002/fee.1309
• McPhearson, T., D. Iwaniec, X. Bai. “Positives visions for guiding transformations toward desirable urban futures.”  Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability doi:10.1016/j.cosust.2017.04.004
• McPhearson, T., S. Parnell, D. Simon, O. Gaffney, T. Elmqvist, X. Bai, D. Roberts, A. Revi. 2016. “Scientists must have a say in the future of cities.” Nature, 538:165-166
• Dodman, D., B. Hayward, M. Pelling, V. Castan Broto, W. Chow, E. Chu, R. Dawson, L. Khirfan, T. McPhearson, A. Prakash, Y. Zheng, and G. Ziervogel. (2022). IPCC AR6 WGII Chapter 6: Cities, Settlements and Key Infrastructure. In: Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group II to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change . Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/9781009325844.008
• Ilieva, R.T., T. McPhearson. 2018. “Social media data for urban sustainability.” Nature Sustainability 1:553–565
• Keeler, B.L., P. Hamel, T. McPhearson, et al. 2019. “Social-ecological and technological factors moderate the value of urban nature.” Nature Sustainability 2: 29-38
• McPhearson, T., M. Raymond, C., Gulsrud, N., Albert, C., Coles, N., Fagerholm, N., Nagatsu, M., Olafsson, A.S., Soininen, N., and Vierikko, K. (2021). Radical changes for transformations to a good Anthropocene. npj Urban Sustainability. 1(5). doi:10.1038/s42949-021-00017-x
• McPhearson, T., E. Cook, M. Berbés-Blázquez, C. Cheng, N.B. Grimm, et al. (2022). A social-ecological-technological systems approach to urban ecosystem services.  One Earth, 5, 5, 505–518.
• McPhearson, T., E. Andersson, T. Elmqvist, N.Frantzeskaki. 2015. “Resilience Of and Through Urban Ecosystem Services,“ Ecosystem Services 12:152-156, doi:10.1016/j.ecoser.2014.07.012
• Petchey, O.L., P.T. McPhearson, T.M. Casey, P.J. Morin. 1999. “Environmental warming alters food-web structure and ecosystem function.” Nature 420:69-72
• Elmqvist, Thomas, Erik Andersson, Niki Frantzeskaki, Timon McPhearson, Per Olsson, Owen Gaffney, Kazuhiko Takeuchi, and Carl Folke. "Sustainability and resilience for transformation in the urban century." Nature sustainability 2, no. 4 (2019): 267–273. doi:10.1038/s41893-019-0250-1

Awards

• 2023 Sustainability Science Award, Ecological Society of America
• 2022 Gulbenkian Prize for Humanity (to IPCC and IPBES)
• 2021 BiodivERsA Prize, “Enabling Green and Blue Infrastructure Potential in Complex Social-Ecological Regions” (ENABLE Project)
• 2020 New York City Climate Heroes Award, NYC Department of Transportation and Human Impacts Institute
• 2019 Sustainability Science Award, Ecological Society of America
• 2019 Innovation in Sustainability Science Award, Ecological Society of America
• 2018 BiodivERsA Prize, “Urban Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services” (URBES Project)
• 2017 Distinguished University Teaching Award, The New School

References

1. Bradley, Ryan (2015-04-23). "The Rat Paths of New York". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2023-09-26. In Central Park, I met Timon McPhearson, a professor of urban ecology at the New School. McPhearson studies how animals and plants get from one place to the next; for the last 10 years, he has been thinking about how to connect big "reservoirs of biodiversity," like Central Park, to everything else. Even things as small as the walled-in tree pits all along the sidewalk outside the park. "That's a dot," he said, pointing to one. "I want to connect the dots."
2. Leland, John (2021-08-20). "Why an East Harlem Street Is 31 Degrees Hotter Than Central Park West". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2023-09-26. Timon McPhearson, director of the Urban Systems Lab at the New School, has spent the last decade studying the disproportionate impact this heat has on Black and brown neighborhoods, where a paucity of tree cover and green space creates "urban heat islands" whose air temperature can be two to four degrees warmer than neighboring areas, with the difference in surface temperatures many times that.
3. ^ "Exploring the urban ecosystem: A dialogue with Dr. Timon McPhearson on past, present, and future trends". Yale Environment Review. 2023-09-07. Retrieved 2023-11-16. McPhearson received his B.S. degree in 1997, studying Environmental Biology at Taylor University. He then pursued a Ph.D. in Ecology, Evolution, and Natural Resources, graduating from Rutgers University in 2004. McPhearson is also a lead member of the urban systems chapter within the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report. For McPhearson, it is urgent to develop urban ecology as a field. Given the far-ranging impacts of urban development, from climate change to human migration, a new scientific field helps investigate common threads.
4. "Climate Activists Hit the Streets | The Nation". 2011-03-18. Archived from the original on 2011-03-18. Retrieved 2023-11-16. While most New Yorkers were just rolling out of their beds on Saturday morning, Timon McPhearson was already at work in the middle of a forest, marking holes in the ground with a can of spray paint. McPhearson, an ecology professor at The New School, was there to plant thousands of cedar, oak and walnut trees in experimental plots, as part of his long-term study to evaluate the environmental effects of a citywide reforestation program called MillionTreesNYC.
5. Mercado, Angely (2021-10-19). "New York City's subway system isn't ready for a storm-filled future". Popular Science. Retrieved 2023-11-16. Timon McPhearson, a professor and the director of the Urban Systems Lab at the New School, argues that there is not one perfect solution for climate proofing the city's subway platforms. He says there needs to be a tiered approach that can work on addressing different causes of flooding during a storm.
6. Medium, Seattle (2022-06-18). "Black People Are More Likely To Die From Heat Stress Than White People In New York City, Report Says". The Seattle Medium. Retrieved 2023-11-16. Timon McPhearson, director of the Urban Systems Lab at The New School who studies the disproportionate impact that heat has on Black and brown neighborhoods, said generally cities have been built and designed in the 20th century in a way that traps heat, making them much hotter than surrounding areas and much hotter in poorer communities and communities of color.
7. "NYC Funded a Pilot to Make Basement Apartments Safer, But Then It Went Off Track". nextcity.org. Retrieved 2023-11-16. "It's unlikely that you're going to be able to stop flooding entirely," says Timon McPhearson, a professor of Urban Ecology at the New School as well as a member of the New York City Panel on Climate Change. McPhearson says there's no standard closure that would block off water in basement apartments because of the variety of the apartments.
8. Wittenberg, Ariel (2021-08-23). "Heat kills. This underfunded program could help". E&E News by POLITICO. Retrieved 2023-11-16. "You get used to hearing people refer to the most vulnerable areas of the city as low-income and Black and brown, but it really is shocking when you see the spatial overlap of where Black and brown communities live, the air conditioning adaptation and the very high heat," said Timon McPhearson, who directs the Urban Systems Lab at the New School, which maps heat vulnerability in the city. "It's long-term systemic racism that has put the most vulnerable people in vulnerable areas."
9. "McPhearson brings climate warnings, scientific progress to Elon". Today at Elon. 2019-11-05. Retrieved 2023-11-16. One of the aspects McPhearson is most concerned with is that plans for urban sustainability and resiliency don't exclude or harm minority or poorer neighborhoods.
10. "How Green Spaces Protect City Residents From Climate Change". NBC LX Home. Retrieved 2023-11-16. "One of the things I think we've realized is that ... the way we've developed over the last century … isn't working when it comes to protecting everyone from climate change, but it's specifically not working for particular communities that have less green space," explained Timon McPhearson, who maps climate risks in New York City to understand which neighborhoods are most at risk. He's found that low income communities are the hottest and the most vulnerable to flooding. This is not a coincidence.
11. "Transforming urban systems: Toward sustainability". EurekAlert!. Retrieved 2023-11-16. Pickett collaborated with Timon McPhearson, a Research Fellow at Cary Institute and Professor at The New School in New York City, and lead author Weiqi Zhou of the Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, on the paper, which is the first to bring together five leading frameworks of urban ecology.
12. ^ "Stockholm Resilience Centre 2019 annual report by Per Larsson - Issuu". issuu.com. 2020-03-30. Retrieved 2023-09-26.
13. "New network on nature-based solutions for cities". www.stockholmresilience.org. 2019-11-13. Retrieved 2023-11-16. Erik Andersson and Timon McPhearson are among the centre researchers who will benefit from being part of "Nature-based Solutions for Urban Resilience in the Anthropocene" (NATURA). This umbrella network bring together a host of other networks in Africa, Asia-Pacific, Europe, North and Latin America. It is funded by the US National Science Foundation for US$2,000,000 for five years.
14. ^ "Centre researchers awarded for groundbreaking paper on urban sustainability". www.stockholmresilience.org. 2023-04-12. Retrieved 2023-09-26.
15. "Sustainability Science Awards – Historical Records Committee | Ecological Society of America". Retrieved 2023-11-16.
16. "CBC Progress Report Fall 2022" (PDF). www.amnh.org.
17. "How Ida dodged NYC's flood defenses". MIT Technology Review. Retrieved 2023-11-16. With the input of researchers like McPhearson, New York City has developed plans to improve its defenses against storm-caused flooding. A forward-looking stormwater resiliency plan released in May 2021 included an assessment of flood risk across the city and proposed solutions ranging from social strategies, like educating local city councils on flood risks, to engineering techniques such as more green roofs and rain gardens.
18. "New flood maps are coming. They won't look pretty". ny1.com. Retrieved 2023-11-16. "The more accurate understanding we have of where it's likely to flood, the better we can prioritize investments to build resiliency to protect against flooding," said Timon McPhearson, an associate professor of urban ecology at The New School.
19. Long, Rebecca (2020-06-25). "'Revel in the grubby wilderness': how to spot nature from lockdown". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2023-11-16. McPhearson's ongoing research into how individuals are responding to the Covid-19 crisis indicates that people are visiting green spaces more often than they did before.
20. ^ sneadm (2022-10-27). "New School Professor Timon McPhearson Part of Two Research Teams Honored with the 2022 Gulbenkian Prize for Humanity". New School News. Retrieved 2023-09-26. McPhearson is a lead author of the IPCC's sixth edition of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Assessment Report and a contributing author to IPBES' assessment reports.
21. Lauria, Maddy (2022-05-03). "Shoring up coastlines and communities with green infrastructure". Fix. Retrieved 2023-11-16.
22. Timon McPhearson | The New School for Public Engagement, retrieved 2023-09-26
23. "Mayor de Blasio, Lower Manhattan Leaders Announce New $100 Million City Commitment". The official website of the City of New York. August 27, 2015. Retrieved 2023-11-16.
24. ^ "Timon McPhearson | Beijer Institute". beijer.kva.se. Retrieved 2023-11-16.

Notes

1. 2023 was his third win of the award.
2. Edited by Thomas Elmqvist, Stockholm Resilience Centre, Xuemei Bai, Australian National University, Canberra, Niki Frantzeskaki, Erasmus University, The Netherlands, Corrie Griffith, Arizona State University, David Maddox, The Nature of Cities, Timon McPhearson, New School University, New York, Susan Parnell, University of Cape Town, Patricia Romero-Lankao, National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, Colorado, David Simon, Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenberg, Mark Watkins, Arizona State University
3. An open access book, part of the book series: "The Urban Book Series (UBS)". Editors: Zoé A. Hamstead, David M. Iwaniec, Timon McPhearson, Marta Berbés-Blázquez, Elizabeth M. Cook, Tischa A. Muñoz-Erickson
4. Edited by Timon McPhearson , Nadja Kabisch , and Niki Frantzeskaki

External links

• Urban Transformations Timon McPhearson
• The New School's Urban Systems Lab
• Timon McPhearson World Economic Forum

• Biography
• United States
• Ecology
• Science

• Ecologists
• American ecologists
• American academics
• The New School faculty
• Living people
• Taylor University alumni
• Rutgers University alumni