by Liam Singer, Anastasiia Volkova, Simone Giorzi, Dennis Wild
Cities are often thought of as concrete deserts, but they are also home to a surprising number of species. Trees, shrubs, insects, birds, and even small mammals all try to make a living in the urban fabric. At the same time, cities are hotspots of the so-called urban heat island effect: built surfaces absorb and store heat during the day and release it slowly at night, keeping temperatures higher than in surrounding rural areas. As summers become hotter, this creates growing challenges for both urban biodiversity and for how people experience heat in everyday city life.
As cities continue to grow worldwide, urban green spaces are becoming more than just places to relax or walk the dog. They are increasingly seen as ecological infrastructure: networks of parks, street trees, riversides, and vegetated strips that allow species to move, survive, and adapt in a changing climate.
Previous research has shown that connected green areas, often called eco-corridors or green corridors, are especially important. They help species move through the city, reduce isolation between populations, and are among the strongest predictors of how many species a city can support. On top of that, vegetation cools the city through shade, evapotranspiration, and by allowing air to circulate. Some studies suggest that well-designed green corridors can lower local air and surface temperatures by several degrees.
Inspired by this, our project focused on Zurich and asked a very practical question: do eco-corridors really make a difference on the ground? And if they do, is that difference visible both in temperature and in biodiversity?
For answers to these questions, take a look at the in-depth blog post that we produced in the context of the Geography. Matters. module at the Department of Geography in the fall semester of 2025.
https://zueribraennt.blogspot.com/2025/12/geo-410-final-blog-post.html
About GEO410
This blog post is part of the outcome of an interdisciplinary Master’s-level course in Geography: GEO410 Geography. Matters. The course aims to bring together diverse geographic research perspectives to engage with some of the most pressing societal and environmental challenges of our time. As the only compulsory module of the Geography MSc program, the course encourages students to think across sub-disciplines of geography and to explore how geographic research can meaningfully contribute to debates around sustainability, justice, and environmental change.
Beyond conducting interdisciplinary research as a team, a central aim of the course was to experiment with creative and accessible forms of science communication. Rather than producing a purely academic output, students translated their research insights into blogposts, intended for a wider, non-specialist audience. The contributions thus showcase not only rigorous scientific work by highly motivated students, but also the importance of communicating research beyond the university and engaging broader publics in conversations about geography, sustainability and the future of our shared environments.
The students in the course GEO410 were supervised by Andreas Vieli, Christian Berndt and Sofia van Moorsel as lecturers and by Nikolas Klaudy as teaching assistant.
Quelle Beitragsbild: blog authors