Abstract

As cities grow, they usually spread out into their rural surroundings. Until the 19th century, the original natural vegetation in these surroundings was seldom looked upon as a resource to be preserved within cities. But in the late 20th century, interest in preservation of natural vegetation as part of the future green infrastructure in cities has increased in many countries. The aim of this paper is to study interconnections between researchers carrying out work in this field. The method used was a survey of published items and analysis of how the references in these papers indicated communication, or lack of communication, between the researchers up to 2004. Scientific papers numbering 153 were found from 21 countries, mainly from two groups of researchers based i) in the USA and Australia, and ii) in the Nordic countries, especially Finland and Sweden. A lack of communication between the two research groups was found. References from Nordic research to Australian and American papers and vice versa were almost absent. The two groups seem to have studied the same field of research with little or no reference to each other. Possible explanations for this situation are discussed. A lack of common terminology has been an obstacle and searching in databases has thus been obstructed

Keywords

communication; natural vegetation; indigenous vegetation; town; city

Published in

Landscape Research
2007, volume: 32, number: 1, pages: 79-94
Publisher: ROUTLEDGE JOURNALS, TAYLOR & FRANCIS LTD

Authors' information