Abstract
As human living environments face increasing challenges with resilience, the concept of nature-based solutions (NBS) was proposed in recent years as a way to promote sustainable living in urban environments. Urban forests and trees play important roles in urban ecosystems, while their potential as an NBS is promising. A bibliometric analysis was first conducted to explore the research pattern of NBS in urban environments. Studies of urban forest and tree-based green infrastructure in NBS research were further investigated using a systematic literature review method. The initial studies on NBS have increased since 2015 with 493 documents published from 142 sources in over 70 countries and regions. Keyword analysis showed green infrastructure had a rather high frequency of utility and received considerable attention. As for urban forests as nature-based solutions (UF-NBS) research, the most prominent study approaches used at different scales and the main benefits and typologies of urban forest studied in the articles were identified. UF-NBS research is still relatively scarce at present. Despite the role of urban forest and trees in addressing environmental challenges being well recognized, UF-NBS studies still need to be conducted in a more comprehensive context, taking social and economic aspects into account.
Highlights
Accepted: 22 October 2021Human living environments are facing more and more severe challenges at present, including desertification, drought, land degradation, freshwater scarcity, loss of biodiversity and climate change, which collectively pose one of the greatest challenges for human beings [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]
This study first had a general review of nature-based solutions” (NBS) since 2015 to better understand the current pattern of NBS studies and the place of urban forests as nature-based solutions (UF-NBS) research based on 493 articles, and examined the 50 UF-NBS studies from NBS research papers to explore the approaches used to investigate urban forest and trees as NBS at different scales, and what typologies and benefits were found in the literature
Our study showed that environmental benefits provided by the urban forest and trees were assessed by most UF-NBS articles with quantitative methods
Summary
Human living environments are facing more and more severe challenges at present, including desertification, drought, land degradation, freshwater scarcity, loss of biodiversity and climate change, which collectively pose one of the greatest challenges for human beings [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]. Increasing livability in cities and communities has become a key global priority [9]. The NBS concept grew over the past decade and has further been vigorously promoted by prominent organizations such as the Nature Conservancy and the International Union for Conservation of Nature [11,12]. In Europe, NBS has become a priority area of the EU Horizon 2020 vision, involving biodiversity and ecosystem services [13]
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