February 23, 2024
Biodiversity information is shaped by socioeconomics in the age of digital information
Diego Ellis-Soto
PhD Candidate, Yale University
Abstract
Historic segregation and inequality are critical to understanding modern environmental conditions. Race-based zoning policies, such as redlining in the United States during the 1930s, are associated with racial inequity and adverse multigenerational socioeconomic levels in income and education, and disparate environmental characteristics including tree canopy cover across urban neighborhoods. Recent work quantifying the association between redlining and bird biodiversity information reveals that historically redlined neighborhoods remain the most under-sampled urban areas for bird biodiversity today, potentially impacting conservation priorities and propagating urban environmental inequities across 195 cities in the United States. In fact, the disparity in sampling across redlined neighborhoods grades increased by approximately 40% over the past 20 years. The legal, social, and political consequences of such uneven distribution shaped by inequality and segregation will be discussed alongside ongoing initiatives for a more just sampling of biodiversity blending education, racial justice, science, and music.
Biosketch
Diego is a Uruguayan PhD candidate in Ecology at Yale University and a NASA FINESST Future Investigator. Working at the intersection of ecology, conservation, and environmental justice, he researches how animals move across the world under increasing human threats and a changing climate. In addition, he is increasingly interested in how our access to biodiversity data is shaped by our socioeconomic status and how past and present social inequalities amplify current disparities in environmental sciences. As a music producer Diego blends sounds from biological concepts and technologies, with music theory, for example by making eight termites jam together or installing microphones on an urban farm to make farm birds singing a song. Diego received the Sidnie Manton award--best review study in the Journal of Animal Ecology-- of 2022 for his work on studying the ecosystem services provided by animals on the mode and the Public Scholar Award of 2023 by the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Yale University for his research shaping public discourse and activism.