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Ecological Intelligence

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Ecological Intelligence / Subject

landscape fragmentation

Peer-reviewed Africa

Nigeria's urban expansion fragmented nature even as built-up patches joined

Evidence
Peer-reviewed
Geography
Oye-Ekiti, Nigeria
System
Urban land cover and habitat fragmentation

WHAT THE EVIDENCE SAYS

Built-up land increased from 3.12 square kilometres in 1987 to 94.23 in 2025, while forest decreased from 70.44 to 49.77. Landscape metrics reflect natural-cover fragmentation, and a cellular automata–Markov model projects additional conversion by 2065.

WHY IT MATTERS / OUR READ

Urban design needs to measure ecological patch configuration, stormwater pathways and connectivity, not only percent green cover.

CAVEATS / UNCERTAINTY

Historical maps have classification uncertainty; the 2065 results are modeled scenarios, not confirmed development or measured wildlife responses.

SOURCE

Discover Sustainability — Salau and Akinyemi (2026)
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Land-cover classifications document growth; a model explores one possible future.

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Peer-reviewed Global

Emerging-disease geography has an anthropogenic fingerprint—but not one ecological driver

Evidence
Peer-reviewed
Geography
Global; 169 countries
System
Human–animal disease landscapes / One Health

WHAT THE EVIDENCE SAYS

Researchers harmonized 58,319 outbreak events for 32 diseases and tested 16 social and environmental drivers while modeling reporting bias. Outbreak risk was often higher in forested, fragmented mosaic landscapes with people and livestock, and several vector-borne diseases shared strong responses to fragmentation and long-term drying. Directly transmitted zoonoses shared few consistent drivers. Reporting declined by a median 32% for each additional hour of travel time to a health facility.

WHY IT MATTERS / OUR READ

The study weakens the search for one global ecological lever against emerging disease. Landscape intervention can matter, but prevention and surveillance need to be pathogen- and place-specific—and healthcare access is itself part of the observed disease map.

CAVEATS / UNCERTAINTY

The analysis is observational and assembled from heterogeneous surveillance systems, with sparse data for several high-concern pathogens. Associations are not causal estimates for individual diseases, and under-detection remains a central limitation.

SOURCE

Nature
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A global analysis of 58,319 outbreak records finds shared landscape signals for several vector-borne diseases, while directly transmitted zoonoses show far less consistent environmental patterning.

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