Cities resilient to climate change through natural heritage: a bibliometric review

Abstract

Natural heritage is the composition between biodiversity and geodiversity; therefore, it is also a primary source of ecosystem and geosystem services that have multiple benefits such as adaptation to climate change. However, it is mainly found in natural environments. On the other hand, due to climate change, there are cities around the world with extreme conditions such as heat or cold waves. The aim of this article is to analyse the implications of climate change in urban areas through a bibliometric mapping of ecosystem and geosystem services in urban planning of cities for the use of natural heritage as control and development of cities. The methods are indicated in a) selection of the topic, keywords and scientific databases; b) pre-processing, merging of databases, and data processing using Bibliometrix-RStudio; and c) analysis and interpretation of results. A total of 1425 records were found in Scopus and 1839 in the Web of Science, and the countries contributing to the subject are the United States (54%), China (52.2%), Germany (18.4%), the United Kingdom (17.8%), and Italy (15.8%). In addition, the processing of the unified database made it possible to recognize i) conceptual and intellectual structure, research trends over time. Finally, geosystem services and ecosystem services help mitigate climate change through green infrastructure, blue infrastructure, and their adaptability to gray infrastructure, contributing to sustainable development goals: sustainable cities and communities and climate action.