Provisioning ecosystem services: Multitier bibliometric analysis and visualisation

Abstract

Provisioning Ecosystem Services (ESs) play a crucial role in human wellbeing and survival. Their contribution in nation’s economy is also immense as evident from the recently appearing markets and valuation systems. However, being consumed most largely at household levels, they continue to remain unaccounted and thus fail to form the part of formally established supply chains. The limited use of spatially explicit methods for mapping them further limits the detailed investigation over the larger areas. The present study addresses the global research trends in the field of Provisioning ESs using the open access bibliometric data. A multitier approach has been adopted focussing on Provisioning ESs as a whole, use of Geographic Information System (GIS) tools in mapping them with further emphasizing the hot spots based approaches. Global level visualisation of co-authorship for the top countries, organisations and the most cited journals has been generated using VOSviewer. The study revealed critical insights about the inter-country as well as inter-organisations linkages along with networks of the most cited journals. In the current scenario attracting increased attention of researchers in the field of Provisioning ESs worldwide, this study serve as a preliminary reference and guide them to delve further into the subject in an informed and time efficient manner. • Three tiers have been taken up for the study. • Further, each tier has been analysed in detail at three levels. • For each tiers, UK, US and Germany occupied the top three positions for the Co-authorship-countries networks. • Two organisations from Germany and Wageningen University & Research, Netherlands occupied top three places. • ‘Ecosystem Services’ and ‘Ecological Indicators’ stayed at the top two positions in the list of highly cited journals.