CitiesGOER: Globally Observed Environmental Data for 52,602 Cities with a Population ≥ 5000

CitiesGOER is a database that provides environmental data for 52,602 cities and 48 environmental variables, including 38 bioclimatic variables, 8 soil variables and 2 topographic variables. Data were extracted from the same 30 arc-seconds global grid layers that were prepared when making the TreeGOER (Tree Globally Observed Environmental Ranges) database that is available from https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7922927. Details on the preparations of these layers are provided by Kindt, R. (2023). TreeGOER: A database with globally observed environmental ranges for 48,129 tree species. Global Change Biology, 00, 1–16. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/gcb.16914. CitiesGOER was designed to be used together with TreeGOER and possibly also with the GlobalUsefulNativeTrees database (Kindt et al. 2023) to allow users to filter suitable tree species based on environmental conditions of the planting site.

The identities and coordinates of cities were sourced from a data set with information for cities with a population size larger than 1000 that was created by Opendatasoft and made available from https://public.opendatasoft.com/explore/dataset/geonames-all-cities-with-a-population-1000/table/?disjunctive.cou_name_en&sort=name. The data was downloaded on 22-JULY-2023 and afterwards filtered for cities with a population of 5000 or above. Cities where information on the country was missing were removed. The coordinates of cities were used to extract the environmental data via the terra package (Hijmans et al. 2022, version 1.6-47) in the R 4.2.1 environment.

Version 2023.08 provided median values from 23 Global Climate Models (GCMs) for Shared Socio-Economic Pathway (SSP) 1-2.6 and from 18 GCMs for SSP 3-7.0, both for the 2050s (2041-2060). Similar methods were used to calculate these median values as in the case studies for the TreeGOER manuscript (calculations were partially done via the BiodiversityR::ensemble.envirem.run function and with downscaled bioclimatic and monthly climate 2.5 arc-minutes future grid layers available from WorldClim 2.1).

Version 2023.09 used similar methods as for previous versions to provide median values from 13 GCMs for the 2090s (2081-2100) for SSP 5-8.5.

The locations of the 52,602 cities are mapped in one of the series available from the TreeGOER Global Zones atlas that can be obtained from https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8252756.

When using CitiesGOER in your work, cite this depository and the following:

• Fick, S. E., & Hijmans, R. J. (2017). WorldClim 2: New 1‐km spatial resolution climate surfaces for global land areas. International Journal of Climatology, 37(12), 4302–4315. https://doi.org/10.1002/joc.5086
• Title, P. O., & Bemmels, J. B. (2018). ENVIREM: An expanded set of bioclimatic and topographic variables increases flexibility and improves performance of ecological niche modeling. Ecography, 41(2), 291–307. https://doi.org/10.1111/ecog.02880
• Poggio, L., de Sousa, L. M., Batjes, N. H., Heuvelink, G. B. M., Kempen, B., Ribeiro, E., & Rossiter, D. (2021). SoilGrids 2.0: Producing soil information for the globe with quantified spatial uncertainty. SOIL, 7(1), 217–240. https://doi.org/10.5194/soil-7-217-2021
• Kindt, R. (2023). TreeGOER: A database with globally observed environmental ranges for 48,129 tree species. Global Change Biology, 00, 1–16. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/gcb.16914.
• Opendatasoft (2023) Geonames - All Cities with a population > 1000. https://public.opendatasoft.com/explore/dataset/geonames-all-cities-with-a-population-1000/information/?disjunctive.cou_name_en&sort=name (accessed 22-JULY-2023)

The development of CitiesGOER was supported by the Darwin Initiative to project DAREX001 of Developing a Global Biodiversity Standard certification for tree-planting and restoration, by Norway’s International Climate and Forest Initiative through the Royal Norwegian Embassy in Ethiopia to the Provision of Adequate Tree Seed Portfolio project in Ethiopia, and by the Green Climate Fund through the IUCN-led Transforming the Eastern Province of Rwanda through Adaptation project.