TITLE:
Constructing, Mapping, and Analyzing Global Urban Forest Databases Using Hyperlinks: A World of Vast Unevenness and Research Challenges
AUTHORS:
Stanley D. Brunn, Olena Dronova, Mahmuda Sharmin
KEYWORDS:
Urban Forests, Database, Mapping, Google Scholar, Hyperlinks, Disparities, Unevenness
JOURNAL NAME:
Natural Resources,
Vol.16 No.1,
January
31,
2025
ABSTRACT: A distinctive feature of scholarly communities today is exploring topics and concepts in interdisciplinary and international contexts. This observation is increasingly apparent and visible in advancing our thinking and policies related to human/environmental worlds at local, regional, and global scales. Maps are an important part of these innovative and ongoing research approaches. In this context, we consider urban forests a topic meriting more attention of scholars studying the geographic and environmental intersections of the natural sciences with the social sciences and humanities. We construct two innovative knowledge bases, one a conceptual framework based on major themes and concepts related to mapping urban forests using key words of the first 100 results of a Google Scholar query and a second using the number of Google Scholar hyperlinks about mapping urban forests in 244 capital cities. We discovered that the constructed world maps reveal vast global unevenness in our knowledge about urban forests in hyperlink numbers and ratios, results that merit further attention by disciplinary, international and interdisciplinary scholarly communities.