Evaluation of the ecosystem services approach in agricultural literature

Abstract

Background The ecosystem services approach is increasingly used in scientific literature all over the world. Originally the concept was proposed for natural or semi-natural ecosystems. However, for some years the approach is also used in literature related to agriculture. While ecosystems under agricultural management provide important services, the management also has negative environmental effects and consumes certain ecosystem services. This raises the question in what relation and to which extent the ecosystem services approach is applied in agricultural research. Moreover, it is interesting where and on what scale studies were conducted. New information The purpose of this literature data article is to give an open accessible database to analyse ecosystem services indexed literature with an agricultural context. It gives an overview on i) the assimilation of the ecosystem services concept across several scientific disciplines that deal with agriculture, ii) the scale and regions of studies. Further, we evaluated iii) how the relation of agriculture to ecosystem services is conceptualised. This database enables potential users to get better insights into the application of the ecosystem services approach on agricultural research questions and whether new or different findings can be generated in comparison to conventional disciplinary research.