DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.8175429
title: CitiesGOER: Globally Observed Environmental Data for 52,602 Cities with a Population ≥ 5000

description: 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 29: 6303–6318. 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.

Version 2024.10 includes a new data set that documents the location of the city locations in Holdridge Life Zones. Information is given for historical (1901-1920), contemporary (1979-2013) and future (2061-2080; separately for RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5) climates inferred from global raster layers that are available for download from DRYAD and were created for the following article: Elsen et al. 2022. Accelerated shifts in terrestrial life zones under rapid climate change. Global Change Biology, 28, 918–935. https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.15962. Version 2024.10 further includes Holdridge Life Zones for the climates that were available from the previous versions, calculating biotemperatures and life zones with similar methods as used by Holdridge (1947; 1967) and Elsen et al. (2022) (for future climates, median values were determined first for monthly maximum and minimum temperatures across GCMs ). The distributions of the 48,129 species documented in TreeGOER across the Holdridge Life Zones are given in this Zenodo archive: https://zenodo.org/records/14020914.

Version 2024.11 includes a new data set that documents the location of the city locations in Köppen-Geiger climate zones. Information is given for historical (1901-1930, 1931-1960, 1961-1990) and future (2041-2070 and 2071-2099) climates, with for the future climates seven scenarios each (SSP 1-1.9, SSP 1-2.6, SSP 2-4.5, SSP 3-7.0, SSP 4-3.4, SSP 4-6.0 and SSP 5-8.5). This data set was created from 30 arc-second raster layers available via: Beck, H.E., McVicar, T.R., Vergopolan, N. et al. High-resolution (1 km) Köppen-Geiger maps for 1901–2099 based on constrained CMIP6 projections. Sci Data 10, 724 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-023-02549-6  

Version 2025.03 includes extra columns for the baseline, 2050s and 2090s datasets that partially correspond to climate zones used in the GlobalUsefulNativeTrees database. One of these zones are the Whittaker biome types, available as a polygon from the plotbiomes package (see also here). Whittaker biome types were extracted with similar R scripts as described by Kindt 2025 (these were also used to calculate environmental ranges of TreeGOER species, as archived here).

Version 2025.03 further includes information for the baseline climate on the steady state water table depth, obtained from a 30 arc-seconds raster layer calculated by the GLOBGM v1.0 model (Verkaik et al. 2024). Also included was the elevation, obtained from the same WorldClim 2.1 raster layer used to prepare TreeGOER.

 

As an alternative to CitiesGOER, the ClimateForecasts database (https://zenodo.org/records/10776414) documents the environmental conditions at the locations of 15,504 weather stations. ClimateForecasts was integrated in the GlobalUsefulNativeTrees database (see Kindt et al. 2023).

 

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 29: 6303–6318. 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)


When using information from the Holdridge Life Zones, also cite:



Elsen, P. R., Saxon, E. C., Simmons, B. A., Ward, M., Williams, B. A., Grantham, H. S., Kark, S., Levin, N., Perez-Hammerle, K.-V., Reside, A. E., & Watson, J. E. M. (2022). Accelerated shifts in terrestrial life zones under rapid climate change. Global Change Biology, 28, 918–935. https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.15962


When using information from Köppen-Geiger climate zones, also cite:



Beck, H.E., McVicar, T.R., Vergopolan, N., Berg, A., Lutsko, N.J., Dufour, A., Zeng, Z., Jiang, X., van Dijk, A.I. and Miralles, D.G. 2023. High-resolution (1 km) Köppen-Geiger maps for 1901–2099 based on constrained CMIP6 projections. Sci Data 10, 724. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-023-02549-6


When using information on the Whittaker biome types, also cite:



Ricklefs, R. E., Relyea, R. (2018). Ecology: The Economy of Nature. United States: W.H. Freeman.

Whittaker, R. H. (1970). Communities and ecosystems.

Valentin Ștefan, & Sam Levin. (2018). plotbiomes: R package for plotting Whittaker biomes with ggplot2 (v1.0.0). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7145245


When using information on the steady state water table depth, also cite:



Verkaik, J., Sutanudjaja, E. H., Oude Essink, G. H., Lin, H. X., & Bierkens, M. F. (2024). GLOBGM v1. 0: a parallel implementation of a 30 arcsec PCR-GLOBWB-MODFLOW global-scale groundwater model. Geoscientific Model Development, 17(1), 275-300. https://gmd.copernicus.org/articles/17/275/2024/


 

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. Development of version 2024.10 was further supported by the Green Climate Fund through the Readiness proposal on Climate Appropriate Portfolios of Tree Diversity for Burkina Faso project, by the Bezos Earth Fund to the Quality Tree Seed for Africa in Kenya and Rwanda project and by the German International Climate Initiative (IKI) to the regional tree seed programme on The Right Tree for the Right Place for the Right Purpose in Africa.