Ecosystem services in urban green areas: a bibliometric analysis

Abstract

Ecosystem services represent an opportunity for cities to achieve sustainable spaces that directly
and indirectly benefit their inhabitants through nature. This research aims to identify research on
ecosystem services developed at the international level through a bibliometric analysis using the
database Dimensions and the VOSviewer software for bibliometric mapping, with the keywords
“Urban green areas AND ecosystem services”, as they are the most commonly used in international
research. Findings show a total of 2,494 articles from 1975 to 2023, where the first article located
is entitled “Study of limit of natural surfaces in our living environment” by Isoya Shinji in 1975.
The most cited document was “Promoting ecosystem and human health in urban areas using Green
Infrastructure: A literature review”, with 1,655 citations by Tzoulas et al. in 2007, being cited in
25% of the categories of environmental sciences and the built environment. China was the country
with the highest scientific production, with 13% of the total, followed by the United States with 12%,
where the former has a clear tendency towards environmental values and the latter tends to consider
to a greater extent the social valuation, reflecting an evident concern for the welfare of the population.
It is concluded that research on ecosystem services indicates that their most outstanding contribution
is to human health.