Two decades of Urban Forestry & Urban Greening: Taking stock and looking forward

Abstract

Since its establishment in 2002, the journal of Urban Forestry & Urban Greening (UFUG) has been committed to presenting its audience with high-quality research and cutting-edge knowledge pertinent to urban and peri-urban vegetation with regard to their use, planning, design, establishment, and management. In tandem with an increasing recognition of the importance of urban forests for addressing various challenges facing human societies and ensuring sustainable development, UFUG has attracted more and more scholarly attention. Over the past two decades (2002–2023), scholars from all over the world have produced a wide variety of scholarship, totaling up to 90 volumes with 2655 articles published from multiple fields, which has significantly improved our understanding of urban forests as integral parts of urban social-ecological systems. UFUG has developed rapidly and become one of the key journals in multiple research domains including forestry, urban studies, and environmental studies. This paper presents a systematic bibliometric analysis to take stock of UFUG publications, unravel key research hotspots, and outline promising avenues for future research. The traditional scientific hubs in the USA and Europe (particularly United Kingdom and Scandinavian countries) as pioneers in urban forestry research still play a key role, whilst China has become the top leading producer of publications, pointing towards an increasingly multipolar world in terms of urban forestry research and relevant knowledge generation. Keyword analysis reveals an expansion of research focus from physical aspects of urban greenspaces (such as soil and vegetation composition) to integrated and multifunctional networks of greenspaces, and a shift of research interests from individual trees’ performance to urban biodiversity, ecosystem services, and recently to the nuanced interaction between urban forests, public health and social inequity, from an ecological perspective to a social-ecological integrated one. Nevertheless, the ecological quality/biodiversity of urban forests has emerged as a new theme, and how both the quantity and the quality of urban forests can be adequately assessed via innovative methodologies and how relevant empirical evidence can inform policy and governance of urban forests for maximizing their ecosystem services and mitigating their ecosystem disservices are yet to be researched.