Two decades of Novel Ecosystems: Literature analysis of topics, trends and connectivity
- 1School of the Environment, The University of Queensland
Abstract
1. As human-driven climate change and other anthropogenic forces produce widespread impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem functioning, many ecosystems are shifting into unprecedented, novel states. The Novel Ecosystem Concept (NEC), formalized in 2006, was developed as an alternative framework for managing "novel ecosystems", human-altered systems that are challenging to restore to their historical state. In the years since, the NEC has been proposed as a broader lens for ecosystem management under ongoing global change. 2. We evaluated how the uptake and potential of the NEC have been realized over time using a bibliometric and linguistic toolkit. Using bibliometric data from the Web of Science, we clustered 40,914 applied ecology papers published between 2006 and 2025 into twenty research topics based on language use. We quantified the volume of NEC research within each topic, rates of publication over time, and cross-topic connectivity proxied by citations. 3. We found NEC research in most of the topics of applied ecology, particularly invasion biology, ecosystem services, soil research and studies of freshwater, urban and marine systems. In contrast, several major conservation-focused topics, including protected areas, threatened species, and human-wildlife interactions, contained little research with an explicit link to novel ecosystems. Publication rates increased across all topics, although growth slowed over time. At the same time, NEC research became more focused into ecosystem-specific topics, especially marine ecosystems. NEC research across different topics was well-connected by citations, with papers more likely to cite each other when they used similar language. 4. Overall, the NEC does not appear to have expanded beyond its origins in restoration to become a broadly applied framework across conservation and ecosystem management. Instead, the concepts behind the NEC have been integrated into restoration and management frameworks grappling with climate and other anthropogenic change, while "novelty" is emerging as a powerful quantitative variable for measuring ecological change over space and time. Our results highlight the potential value of bibliometric and linguistic tools to deconstruct the ecological literature to inform what we can, or should, do to intervene for benefit of nature and people.
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BibTeX
@misc{staples2026decades,
title = {{Two decades of Novel Ecosystems: Literature analysis of topics, trends and connectivity}},
author = {T. L. Staples and P. Bridgewater and Y. Buckley and G. Durigan and J. Harris and T. Heger and M. Kerr and S. L. Maes and S. Moxon and S. Murphy and A. Ordonez and R. Standish and J.-C. Svenning and B. M. Zoderer and M. Collier},
howpublished = {bioRxiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.64898/2026.10.09.758140},
url = {https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.10.09.758140v1},
note = {CC BY},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Two decades of Novel Ecosystems: Literature analysis of topics, trends and connectivity
AU - T. L. Staples
AU - P. Bridgewater
AU - Y. Buckley
AU - G. Durigan
AU - J. Harris
AU - T. Heger
AU - M. Kerr
AU - S. L. Maes
AU - S. Moxon
AU - S. Murphy
AU - A. Ordonez
AU - R. Standish
AU - J.-C. Svenning
AU - B. M. Zoderer
AU - M. Collier
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/09
PB - bioRxiv
DO - 10.64898/2026.10.09.758140
UR - https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.10.09.758140v1
AB - 1. As human-driven climate change and other anthropogenic forces produce widespread impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem functioning, many ecosystems are shifting into unprecedented, novel states. The Novel Ecosystem Concept (NEC), formalized in 2006, was developed as an alternative framework for managing "novel ecosystems", human-altered systems that are challenging to restore to their historical state. In the years since, the NEC has been proposed as a broader lens for ecosystem management under ongoing global change. 2. We evaluated how the uptake and potential of the NEC have been realized over time using a bibliometric and linguistic toolkit. Using bibliometric data from the Web of Science, we clustered 40,914 applied ecology papers published between 2006 and 2025 into twenty research topics based on language use. We quantified the volume of NEC research within each topic, rates of publication over time, and cross-topic connectivity proxied by citations. 3. We found NEC research in most of the topics of applied ecology, particularly invasion biology, ecosystem services, soil research and studies of freshwater, urban and marine systems. In contrast, several major conservation-focused topics, including protected areas, threatened species, and human-wildlife interactions, contained little research with an explicit link to novel ecosystems. Publication rates increased across all topics, although growth slowed over time. At the same time, NEC research became more focused into ecosystem-specific topics, especially marine ecosystems. NEC research across different topics was well-connected by citations, with papers more likely to cite each other when they used similar language. 4. Overall, the NEC does not appear to have expanded beyond its origins in restoration to become a broadly applied framework across conservation and ecosystem management. Instead, the concepts behind the NEC have been integrated into restoration and management frameworks grappling with climate and other anthropogenic change, while "novelty" is emerging as a powerful quantitative variable for measuring ecological change over space and time. Our results highlight the potential value of bibliometric and linguistic tools to deconstruct the ecological literature to inform what we can, or should, do to intervene for benefit of nature and people.
ER -