title: Testing theories to explore the drivers of cities' atmospheric emissions.
abstract: Despite a growing body of evidence demonstrating the importance of cities as sources of many local, regional, and global impacts on the atmosphere, ecosystems, and human populations, most theories on the relationship between society and the environment have focused on the global or national level. A variety of theories exist on human-environment interactions; for example, ecological modernization, urban transitions, and human ecology. However, with the exception of urban transitions, these theories have been mainly concerned with nation states and have ignored the subnational and local (city) levels. This article aims at filling this gap by employing ordinary least squares regression to examine these theories at the city level using the STIRPAT formula. It finds that with the exception of population (which shows an unstable relationship with the impacts indicators applied in the analysis) a remarkable level of variation exists in the importance of drivers across the three exercises. This led us to conclude that urban atmospheric pollutants result from diverse activities (e.g., transportation, industrial), are formed through different processes (vehicle combustion, biomass burning), have a residence time ranging from hours to years, and are the outcome of diverse sets of societal and environmental drivers.
authors.affiliation: Institute for the Study of Society and the Environment (ISSE), National Center for Atmospheric Research, Denver, CO 80304, USA. prlankao@ncar.edu
authors.forename: Patricia Romero
authors.initials: PR
authors.lastname: Lankao
authors.forename: John L
authors.initials: JL
authors.lastname: Tribbia
authors.forename: Doug
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Nychka
mesh_terms: D000397:Air Pollution / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D002947:Cities; D017753:Ecosystem; D006801:Humans; D007220:Industrial Waste / Q000009:adverse effects; D016018:Least-Squares Analysis; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D012044:Regression Analysis; D018570:Risk Assessment; D012931:Social Environment; D013223:Statistics as Topic; D013458:Sulfur Dioxide / Q000633:toxicity; D014505:Urban Population / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D014506:Urban Renewal / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D001335:Vehicle Emissions / Q000633:toxicity
chemical_list: D007220:Industrial Waste; D001335:Vehicle Emissions; D013458:Sulfur Dioxide