Research on Ecological Infrastructure from 1990 to 2018: A Bibliometric Analysis

Exploring urban green packages as part of Nature-based Solutions for climate change adaptation measures in rapidly growing cities of the Global South

Given a lot of elusive information on the use and implementation of Nature-based Solutions (NbS) in the Global South, this review provides a synthesis of the evidence on the: - (1) distribution of urban green technologies in form of arboriculture and urban agriculture as a part of NbS packages for the sustainability of cities against population growth and impact of climate change; and (2) options of integrating and mainstreaming various NbS packages into city development policies, planning processes, and decision-making agendas. The sustainability of urban green as part of NbS packages and the usefulness for improvement of livelihoods is determined by the spatial (geographical location) and temporal (time of action) scales, and socio-ecological and institutional factors. Various NbS packages have shown the ability for use as climate change adaptation measures throughout the world. These functions include protection from soil erosion, protection from inland flooding, buffering natural resources against drier and more variable climates, protection from coastal hazards and sea-level rise, moderation of urban heatwaves and effects of heat island, and managing storm-water and flooding in urban areas. Furthermore, the benefits of urban agriculture and arboriculture include use as sources of food and generation of income; improve recreation and social interactions, and the sustainability of biodiversity. They also mitigate the impact of environmental pollution and climate change through reduction of gas emissions and act as carbon sinks. While the starting capital and lack of policy on urban agriculture and arboriculture in many countries, the importance of the industry is inevitably a useful agenda especially in the Global South due to vulnerability to the impact of climate change. This review also suggests the inclusion of all institutions, governments, and relevant stakeholders to emphasize gender sensitization at all levels of planning and decision-making in food production and adaptation measures to climate change.

From a Hard to Soft Approach for Flood Management in the Vietnamese Mekong Delta: Integrating Ecological Engineering for Urban Sustainability in My Tho City

Flooding is one of the leading challenges faced by delta cities in the world. Flood risk management using flood control infrastructure (FCI) is a popular solution to prevent flood damage; however, this is receiving enormous criticism due to its negative impacts on urban ecosystems. Recently, there have been new approaches to flood risk management that gradually shifted the focus away from FCI, such as ecological infrastructure (EI) based approaches. However, the conventional thinking that cities cannot be safe without FCI seems an immutable one, especially in developing countries. This study firstly assessed human–river interaction in direct relation to FCI and outlined the limitations of FCI. Then, an urban ecology research model was used to conduct a case study in the Vietnamese Mekong Delta (VMD), in which the interaction between factors, including riverine urbanization, FCI formation dynamics, the changing hydrological regime, flood risk, and riverine ecosystem degradation were evaluated. Due to the dynamism and complexity of the interactions between humans and rivers at the VMD, this study attempts to demonstrate that building the ability to adapt to flood risks based on EI will have a crucial role in enhancing the sustainability of delta cities. Through a case study in My Tho City (MTC) a flood resilience management scenario for a riverine urban area along the Mekong River was developed to discuss the role of EI in flood risk reduction and the restoration of riverine native ecosystems. The findings from this study suggests that EI should be considered as an effective and indispensable design tool for the conservation of riparian ecological corridors and public open spaces—which is a major challenge for urban areas in the context of increasing climate change impacts in the VMD.

The Ecosystem Services and Green Infrastructure: A Systematic Review and the Gap of Economic Valuation

This study was conducted to determine the trends at the intersection of studies made on green infrastructure and ecosystem services, which have frequently become preferred in establishing urban−green space relationships in global research. Green-related concepts have frequently been used from past to present in order to neutralise the increasing pressures on urban dynamics resulting from rapid urbanisation. Green corridor, green belt, green structure, and green finger/hand concepts have been used to provide recreational opportunities, protect nature, and keep urban sprawl under control. For the last decade, however, in addition to the traditional green concepts, green infrastructure (GI) and ecosystem services (ES) have been preferred in contemporary urban planning, as they enable the integration of the ecological concerns of the landscape and the socio-political perspective. The aim of this study is to detect the trends of the green infrastructure and ecosystem services association, and to reveal these trends in the common area with the bibliometric mapping method. The economic concept and its analysing use at the intersection of green infrastructure and ecosystem services were explored with VOSviewer using the Scopus® database. Furthermore, the number of documents, which initially began with around 39,719 studies, was reduced by filtering through systematic reviews, to only three documents that met the economic valuation criteria. In this way, a lack of economic analyses, creating a serious research gap within the framework of green infrastructure and ecosystem services, was quantitatively determined.

Riparian Ecological Infrastructures: Potential for Biodiversity-Related Ecosystem Services in Mediterranean Human-Dominated Landscapes

Riparian Ecological Infrastructures are networks of natural and semi-natural riparian areas located in human-dominated landscapes, crucial in supporting processes that directly or indirectly benefit humans or enhance social welfare. In this study, we developed a novel multimetric index, termed Habitat Ecological Infrastructure’s Diversity Index (HEIDI), to quantify the potential of Riparian Ecological Infrastructures in supporting biodiversity, and related ecosystem services, in three managed landscapes: Intensive Agriculture, Extensive Agriculture, and Forest Production. Metrics describing the structure, composition, and management of riparian vegetation and associated habitats were used to derive the potential of Riparian Ecological Infrastructures in supporting three distinct biological dispersal groups: short-range dispersers (ants), medium-range dispersers (pollinators), and long-range dispersers (birds, bats, and non-flying small mammals). The composition of floristic resources, assessed by identifying trees and shrubs at the species and genus level, and herbaceous plants at the family level, was used as a proxy to evaluate the potential of Riparian Ecological Infrastructures in promoting seed dispersal and pollination ecosystem services provided by the three biological communities. Our research evidenced that Riparian Ecological Infrastructures located in the Forest Production and Intensive Agriculture landscapes exhibited the highest and lowest potential for biodiversity-related ecosystem services, respectively. The Forest Production landscape revealed higher suitability of forage resources for short- and medium-range dispersers and a higher landscape coverage by Riparian Ecological Infrastructures, resulting in more potential to create ecological corridors and to provide ecosystem services. The Riparian Ecological Infrastructures located in the Extensive Agriculture landscape seemed to be particularly relevant for supporting long-ranges dispersers, despite providing less habitat for the biological communities. Land-use systems in the proximity of Riparian Ecological Infrastructures should be sustainably managed to promote riparian vegetation composition and structural quality, as well as the riparian width, safeguarding biodiversity, and the sustainable provision of biodiversity-related ecosystem services.

Global Research on Riparian Zones in the XXI Century: A Bibliometric Analysis

Riparian zones (RZs) are transitional environments at the interface between land and freshwater ecosystems, which are important in terms of socioecological services. In this work, we report a bibliometric-based analysis to unveil the knowledge structure and actors of scientific production on riparian zones for the first 20 years of the 21st century. We performed a literature search, querying for riparian zones publications for the period 2001–2020. The selected 1171 bibliographic records were analyzed by extracting several bibliometric indices of reporting tendencies, location, collaboration dynamics, and top topics. Results show that RZs publications increased considerably from 2001 to 2020, and top journals publishing on the subject are from the water, environmental management, and ecology areas. The US, China, Brazil, and Canada were the most productive countries, while the institutions with higher productivity were the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Oregon University. In terms of impact, the US, Canada, and Australia led in citation number, while the country collaboration network showed that the strongest links occur between China and the US. Our results also show that few studies were produced in low-middle income countries, which suggests a need to funnel international funding to study riparian environments in these geographical contexts. According to analysis of frequency, top topics are related to water quality and focused on lotic environments. We here present the main knowledge structure of RZs studies globally for the first 20 years of the XXI century.

Thermal Treatment of Biomass: A Bibliometric Analysis—The Torrefaction Case

The aim of the paper was to summarize and discuss current research trends in biomass thermal treatment (torrefaction process). Quantitative analyses were carried out, in which the main countries, research units and scientists were indicated. The analysis showed a clear upward trend in number of publications after 2010. Most scientists on selected topics come from China, USA, Canada, South Korea, Republic of China, Poland (Web od Science—Core Collection (WoS-CC) and Scopus databases). Quantitative analysis also showed that the most relevant WoS-CC categories in the summary are: Energy Fuels, Engineering Chemical, Agricultural Engineering, Biotechnology Applied Microbiology and Thermodynamics and Scopus Subject area: Energy, Chemical Engineering, Environmental Science, Engineering and Chemistry. Thematic analysis included research topics, process parameters and raw materials used. Thematic groups were separated: torrefaction process (temp.: 150–400 °C), hydrothermal carbonization process (HTC) (temp: 120–500 °C), pyrolysis process (temp.: 200–650 °C) and gasification and co-combustion process (temp.: 350–1600 °C). In the years 2015–2019, current research topics were: new torrefaction technologies (e.g., HTC), improvement of the physico-mechanical, chemical and energetic properties of produced fuel as well as the use of torrefied biomass in the process of pyrolysis, gasification and co-combustion. The raw materials used in all types of biomass thermal treatment were: energy crops, wood from fast-growing and exotic trees, waste from the agri-food industry, sewage sludge and microalgae.

Green Infrastructure and Water: An Analysis of Global Research

Green infrastructure (GI) is a nature-based solution that encompasses all actions that rely on ecosystems and the services they provide to respond to various societal challenges such as climate change, food security or disaster risk. The objective of this work is to analyze the state of the art and latest trends in research on GI related to the water cycle for the period 2002–2019. For this purpose, a bibliometric study is carried out taking as reference the two most important scientific databases, Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus. The results show that, as of 2013, there is an exponential increase in the number of publications. This is due to the fact that significant regions of the planet, such as Europe, have adopted strategies aimed at promoting the use of GI since 2013. The keyword analysis points out that ecosystem services is the most relevant concept, which shows the capacity of these infrastructures to facilitate multiple goods and services related to the water cycle. New lines of research are opened up which are based on the analysis of other elements of GI related to water, such as groundwater.