World's Best Scientists 2026 revealed!

D-Index & Metrics

Environmental Sciences

D-Index
92
Citations
44544
World Ranking
532
National Ranking
240

Research.com Recognitions

  • 2017 - Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
  • 2017 - Member of the National Academy of Sciences

Overview

Karen C. Seto is affiliated with Yale University in the United States and has contributed extensively to environmental science, with a focus on urban land use and sustainability. Their research spans multiple intersecting fields, including global and planetary change, environmental engineering, health, toxicology, mutagenesis, economics, econometrics, sociology, and political science.

Their work frequently appears in leading publication venues. These include:

  • Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
  • Environmental Research Letters
  • npj Urban Sustainability
  • Remote Sensing of Environment
  • Nature Sustainability

Among the recent papers authored or co-authored by Karen C. Seto are:

  • "Biodiversity impacts and conservation implications of urban land expansion projected to 2050" (2022), published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
  • "Our future in the Anthropocene biosphere" (2021), published in AMBIO
  • "Trends in urban land expansion, density, and land transitions from 1970 to 2010: a global synthesis" (2020), published in Environmental Research Letters
  • "Ten facts about land systems for sustainability" (2022), published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
  • "Urban land expansion: the role of population and economic growth for 300+ cities" (2022), published in npj Urban Sustainability

They have collaborated frequently with the following researchers:

  • Meredith Reba
  • Bhartendu Pandey
  • Tzu-Hsin Karen Chen
  • Rodrigo A. Bellezoni
  • Carl Folke

The primary topics of their research include:

  • Land Use and Ecosystem Services
  • Urban Heat Island Mitigation
  • Impact of Light on Environment and Health
  • Climate Change and Health Impacts
  • Urban Agriculture and Sustainability
  • Urban Green Space and Health
  • Urban Transport and Accessibility

Their recognition in the scientific community includes membership in the National Academy of Sciences and fellowship of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, both awarded in 2017.

Best Publications

  • Global forecasts of urban expansion to 2030 and direct impacts on biodiversity and carbon pools

    Karen C. Seto;Burak Güneralp;Burak Güneralp;Lucy R. Hutyra

  • Classification and Change Detection Using Landsat TM Data: When and How to Correct Atmospheric Effects?

    Conghe Song;Curtis E. Woodcock;Karen C. Seto;Mary Pax Lenney

  • A Meta-Analysis of Global Urban Land Expansion

    Karen C. Seto;Michail Fragkias;Burak Güneralp;Michael K. Reilly

  • Systems integration for global sustainability

    Jianguo Liu;Harold A. Mooney;Vanessa Hull;Steven J. Davis

  • Future urban land expansion and implications for global croplands.

    Christopher Bren d’Amour;Femke Reitsma;Giovanni Baiocchi;Stephan Barthel

  • Urbanization, Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services: Challenges and Opportunities: A Global Assessment

    Thomas Elmqvist;Michail Fragkias;Julie Goodness;Burak Güneralp

  • Carbon Lock-In: Types, Causes, and Policy Implications

    Karen C. Seto;Steven J. Davis;Steven J. Davis;Steven J. Davis;Ronald B. Mitchell;Eleanor C. Stokes

  • Biodiversity impacts and conservation implications of urban land expansion projected to 2050

    Unknown

  • Urban land teleconnections and sustainability

    Karen C. Seto;Anette Reenberg;Christopher G. Boone;Michail Fragkias

  • Quantifying Spatiotemporal Patterns of Urban Land-use Change in Four Cities of China with Time Series Landscape Metrics

    Karen C. Seto;Michail Fragkias

  • Mapping urbanization dynamics at regional and global scales using multi-temporal DMSP/OLS nighttime light data

    Qingling Zhang;Karen C. Seto

  • The New Geography of Contemporary Urbanization and the Environment

    Karen C. Seto;Roberto Sánchez-Rodríguez;Michail Fragkias

  • Human Settlements, Infrastructure and Spatial Planning

    Karen Seto;Shobhakar Dhakal;Anthony Bigio;Hilda Blanco

  • Monitoring land-use change in the Pearl River Delta using Landsat TM

    K. C. Seto;C. E. Woodcock;C. Song;X. Huang

  • Roadmap towards justice in urban climate adaptation research

    Linda Shi;Eric Chu;Isabelle Anguelovski;Alexander Aylett

  • Modeling the Drivers of Urban Land Use Change in the Pearl River Delta, China: Integrating Remote Sensing with Socioeconomic Data

    Karen C. Seto;Robert K. Kaufmann

  • Our future in the Anthropocene biosphere.

    Carl Folke;Carl Folke;Stephen Polasky;Johan Rockström;Victor Galaz

  • Hidden linkages between urbanization and food systems.

    Karen C. Seto;Navin Ramankutty

  • Global typology of urban energy use and potentials for an urbanization mitigation wedge

    Felix Creutzig;Giovanni Baiocchi;Robert Bierkandt;Peter-Paul Pichler

  • Research gaps in knowledge of the impact of urban growth on biodiversity

    Robert I. McDonald;Andressa V. Mansur;Fernando Ascensão;Fernando Ascensão;M’lisa Colbert

  • NASA's Black Marble Nighttime Lights Product Suite

    Miguel O. Román;Zhuosen Wang;Zhuosen Wang;Qingsong Sun;Qingsong Sun;Virginia Kalb

  • The impact of urban expansion on agricultural land use intensity in China

    Li Jiang;Xiangzheng Deng;Karen C. Seto

Frequent Co-Authors

Burak Güneralp
Burak Güneralp Texas A&M University
Robert K. Kaufmann
Robert K. Kaufmann Boston University
Thomas Elmqvist
Thomas Elmqvist Stockholm Resilience Centre
Carl Folke
Carl Folke Stockholm University
Qingling Zhang
Qingling Zhang Sun Yat-sen University
Curtis E. Woodcock
Curtis E. Woodcock Boston University
Susan Parnell
Susan Parnell University of Cape Town
Zhuosen Wang
Zhuosen Wang University of Maryland, College Park
Dagmar Haase
Dagmar Haase Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
Miguel O. Román
Miguel O. Román Goddard Space Flight Center

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