Urban areas are critical zones where human-built systems interact with one another and the environment at fine spatio-temporal scales, driving regional-to-global changes. Concomitant with decarbonization and environmental equity efforts emerging in urban areas, urban inhabitants and critical infrastructures are increasingly vulnerable to compounding stresses from climate change, extreme weather, population growth, land-use/land-cover change, and intensifying competition over resources.

Emerging scientific approaches integrating multiple urban systems and sectors are urgently needed to inform the complex tradeoffs facing urban areas, increase resilience to changing stressors, and advance human health/well-being and environmental sustainability objectives.

This session invites studies that advance this aim by examining coupled human-environmental systems, adaptation strategies, and/or environmental justice.

Relevant interdisciplinary examples include:

• Urban microclimate dynamics under changing climate
• Adaptation and heat mitigation in urban areas
• Building energy consumption and heat waste
• Urban processes underlying heterogeneous and inequitable environmental outcomes
• Resilience to urban heat island/extreme heat/ flood/drought risks