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Urban vegetation provides many ecosystem services that make cities more liveable for people. As the world continues to urbanise, the vegetation cover in urban areas is changing rapidly. Here we use Google Earth Engine to map vegetation cover in all urban areas larger than 15 km2 in 2000 and 2015, which covered 390,000 km2 and 490,000 km2 respectively. In 2015, urban vegetation covered a substantial area, equivalent to the size of Belarus. Proportional vegetation cover was highly variable, and declined in most urban areas between 2000 and 2015. Declines in proportional vegetated cover were particularly common in the Global South. Conversely, proportional vegetation cover increased in some urban areas in eastern North America and parts of Europe. Most urban areas that increased in vegetation cover also increased in size, suggesting that the observed net increases were driven by the capture of rural ecosystems through low-density suburban sprawl. Far fewer urban areas achieved increases in vegetation cover while remaining similar in size, although this trend occurred in some regions with shrinking populations or economies. Maintaining and expanding urban vegetation cover alongside future urbanisation will be critical for the well-being of the five billion people expected to live in urban areas by 2030., Remote Sensing, 12 (1), ISSN:2072-4292

Our study provides a first look at the relationship between large-scale buildings incorporating vegetation (Dense and Green) and bird species richness in Milan, and is one of the studies conducted so far to assess this relationship globally. We carried out our survey in and around three Dense and Green and six high-density buildings with no vegetation (Normal Dense). Dense and Green buildings had a higher mean bird species richness (5) than Normal Dense buildings (0.83). We ran an ordinary least squares model with species richness as the dependent variable, building type, the nearby bird species richness and an interaction term between them as explanatory variables. The significant interaction term shows that the number of species on Dense and Green buildings is lower than nearby populations (small buildings, vegetation and other urban areas). This suggests that for this case study Dense and Green buildings may act as stepping-stones within a wider vegetation network, but alone may be too small to provide core habitat for birds., Journal of Urban Ecology, 4 (1), ISSN:2058-5543