Identification of Gaps Between Scientific Knowledge and Policy Practices in Ecosystem Services

The phenomenon of ‘decoupling’ between scientific knowledge and policy decision-making has been criticized in the academic community. In order to examine this potential disconnect in the development of ecosystem services (ES), this study have chosen China, where an extensive national policy corpus is available, as a case. By addressing uncertainty in bibliometric retrieval and cleaning, then obtained a robust dataset with a high matching degree, including 8466 literature records from citation databases, and a total of 140 documents extracted from the policy and regulations database of China were systematically coded. Employing data mining tools, then applied a four-level and three-dimensional bibliometric index system and the three categories of policy instruments to observe the statistical characteristics of the dataset structure, and used mathematical and statistical models, knowledge visualization, and natural language processing techniques to analyze the literature and policy text corpora to explore and identify potential gaps between scientific knowledge and sustainable practice interactions in the ES field. The results show that although ES scientific knowledge has grown rapidly, the proportion of SCI/SSCI-indexed literature has declined within the sampled records, making relevant literature harder to identify. The knowledge system has notable characteristics in multiple dimensions such as productivity, academic influence, interdisciplinarity, and research cooperation, and ecology and management are the knowledge bases for cross-disciplinary research on ES, where the identified scientific knowledge comprises three units and is subdivided into six sub-fields, evenly distributed in the two major journal categories of natural sciences and social sciences. The sampled Chinese policy documents show substantial textual alignment with this knowledge and form an action framework covering 10 policy topics, with more emphasis on policy guidance in ES conservation practice, supplemented by binding and coercive measures. However, potential gaps appear in the limited textual representation of the knowledge units Ecosystem Services Trade-offs and Synergies and Ecosystem Service Flows and Landscape Change, which provide policymakers and scholars with scientific information on potential improvements in ecosystem conservation and management.