Where communities intermingle, diversity grows – The evolution of topics in ecosystem service research

We analyze how the content of ecosystem service research has evolved since the early 1990s. Conducting a computational bibliometric content analysis we process a corpus of 14,118 peer-reviewed scientific article abstracts on ecosystem services (ES) from Web of Science records. To provide a comprehensive content analysis of ES research literature, we employ a latent Dirichlet allocation algorithm. For three different time periods (1990–2000, 2001–2010, 2011–2016), we derive nine main ES topics arising from content analysis and elaborate on how they are related over time. The results show that natural science-based ES research analyzes oceanic, freshwater, agricultural, forest, and soil ecosystems. Pollination and land cover emerge as traceable standalone topics around 2001. Social science ES literature demonstrates a reflexive and critical lens on the role of ES research and includes critiques of market-oriented perspectives. The area where social and natural science converge most is about land use systems such as agriculture. Overall, we provide evidence of the strong natural science foundation, the highly interdisciplinary nature of ES research, and a shift in social ES research towards integrated assessments and governance approaches. Furthermore, we discuss potential reasons for observable topic developments.本研究聚焦20世纪90年代初以来生态系统服务（ecosystem services, 下文简称ES）研究的内容演化脉络。采用计算文献计量内容分析法，本研究处理了来自Web of Science数据库的14118篇同行评议科学文章摘要组成的语料库，所有摘要均围绕ES主题展开。为全面解析ES研究文献的内容特征，本研究引入潜在狄利克雷分配（latent Dirichlet allocation, LDA）算法。针对1990—2000年、2001—2010年、2011—2016年三个不同时间段，本研究通过内容分析提取出9个核心ES研究主题，并详细阐释了这些主题随时间推移的关联关系。研究结果显示：基于自然科学的ES研究主要围绕海洋、淡水、农业、森林与土壤生态系统展开；2001年前后，授粉与土地覆被逐渐形成可追溯的独立研究主题。ES研究的社会科学分支以反思性与批判性视角审视ES研究的价值定位，其中包含对市场化研究范式的批判。社会科学与自然科学融合程度最高的领域，聚焦于农业等土地利用系统。总体而言，本研究证实ES研究以坚实的自然科学为基础，具备高度跨学科属性，同时表明ES的社会科学研究正转向综合评估与治理路径。此外，本研究还探讨了观测到的主题演化现象背后的潜在驱动因素。