Ecosystem Services Research Trends: A Bibliometric Analysis from 2000–2020

Isurun Gamage,Shyamantha Subasinghe,Madhushan Lankathilake,Ruchira Gangahagedara,Wasantha Athukorala

doi:10.3390/ecologies2040021

Abstract

The study of ecosystem services (ES) is becoming increasingly popular, as it plays an important role in human wellbeing, economic growth, and livelihoods. The primary goal of this research is to investigate the global trend in ES research using a rigorous systematic review of highly cited articles. The articles for this study were extracted from Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-E), Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI), and Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) databases of Web of Science Core Collection (WoSCC) covering the period from 2000 to 2020. This study was limited to SCI-E, ESCI, and SSCI databases of the Web of Science. The term “ecosystem service/s” has been used as a research term to filter the study sample and eliminate other databases from the analysis. A citation level equal to or greater than 200 was used to further filtration of articles. This query could restrict to 128 articles that are highly cited in the selected period. Bibliometric analysis results show that, according to the author’s keywords, the “ecosystem service/s” keyword is highly connected to the “biodiversity”, “valuation”, “marine spatial planning”, and “conservation planning”. The U.S.A., Canada, China, France, and Australia are the leading countries in the cumulative number of highly cited articles and networks of co-authors. The U.S.A. is a strong contributor to ES research with China, Canada, and France. The most productive universities linked to the United States were the University of Minnesota, the University of California-Santa Barbara (UC Santa Barbara), and the Chinese Academy of Science. The most significant and compelling author is Halpern S Benjamin, who represents UC Santa Barbara. He has earned international recognition for a model he developed to analyze global data sets of anthropogenic drivers of ecological change in marine environments. The most accessed and studied fields in the ES are terrestrial, urban, and marine environments.

Highlights

IntroductionThe term ‘ecosystem service (ES)’ initially appeared in the 1980s [1]
Web of Science Core Collection (WoSCC) for all articles pertaining to ecosystem services (ES) research (SCI-E, Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), and Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI))
The year 2005 marked the milestone of the global attention to the ES, notably publishing the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA) report in 2005 and The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) in 2010; these might be the reason for this historical paradigm shift [24]

Summary

Introduction

The term ‘ecosystem service (ES)’ initially appeared in the 1980s [1]. Later, this concept gained international attention through the global ecosystem initiative Millennium. The Intergovernmental Science–Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) eventually acknowledged this concept, which is incorporated in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) [4,5,6]. ES has become a key indicator of human wellbeing, as they support global economic prosperity and wellbeing [7]. ES are mainly classified as provisioning, regulating, supporting, and cultural services, which play a vital role in maintaining human wellbeing in many ways [2]

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Conclusion