The increasing intensity, duration, and frequency of heat waves due to human-caused climate change puts historically underserved populations in a heightened state of precarity, as studies observe that vulnerable communities—especially those within urban areas in the United States—are disproportionately exposed to extreme heat. Lacking, however, are insights into fundamental questions about the role of historical housing policies in cauterizing current exposure to climate inequities like intra-urban heat. Here, we explore the relationship between “redlining”, or the historical practice of refusing home loans or insurance to whole neighborhoods based on a racially motivated perception of safety for investment, with present-day summertime intra-urban land surface temperature anomalies. Through a spatial analysis of 108 urban areas in the United States, we ask two questions: (1) how do historically redlined neighborhoods relate to current patterns of intra-urban heat? and (2) do these patterns vary by US Census Bureau region? Our results reveal that 94% of studied areas display consistent city-scale patterns of elevated land surface temperatures in formerly redlined areas relative to their non-redlined neighbors by as much as 7 °C. Regionally, Southeast and Western cities display the greatest differences while Midwest cities display the least. Nationally, land surface temperatures in redlined areas are approximately 2.6 °C warmer than in non-redlined areas. While these trends are partly attributable to the relative preponderance of impervious land cover to tree canopy in these areas, which we also examine, other factors may also be driving these differences. This study reveals that historical housing policies may, in fact, be directly responsible for disproportionate exposure to current heat events.

N atural and social scientists addressing complex ecological problems increasingly recognize the value of one another's research, and often seek multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, or transdisciplinary approaches to investigate real-world issues. A multidisciplinary approach involves researchers from two or more disciplines working collaboratively on a common problem, without modifying disciplinary approaches or developing synthetic conceptual frameworks. An interdisciplinary approach involves the use of an innovative conceptual framework to synthesize and modify two or more disciplinary approaches to deal with a research problem. Finally, a transdisciplinary approach involves nonacademic practitioners working with academics to identify, research, and develop solutions to real-world problems (Tress et al. 2003).Interdisciplinarity, in particular, is heralded as an educational paradigm that can meet the ecological challenges of the coming century (Palmer et al. 2005). The challenge is to develop collaborative partnerships among researchers to explore the complexity of human-nature interactions (Grimm et al. 2000). Interdisciplinary education exposes students to research in multiple disciplines, trains them in collaborative methods through team research, and promotes new forms of communication and collaboration among disciplines. The goal of interdisciplinary education is to develop new researchers and educators in "science at the leading edge" to effectively address pressing societal and environmental problems (Leshner 2004). Interdisciplinary, and now transdisciplinary, research and training are often part of university mission statements and course curricula, and are explicitly Jessica K. Graybill (e-mail: jgraybill@mail.colgate

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