Climate Change Impacts on Recreation Areas: A Bibliometric Analysis with Implications for Environmental Protection and Planning

Climate change increasingly affects urban and regional ecosystems, including urban parks, forests, coastal areas, protected landscapes and other recreation settings. These areas simultaneously support biodiversity, ecosystem services, climate regulation, public health and social well-being; consequently, their climate vulnerability requires an integrated socio-ecological perspective. This study maps the global knowledge structure of research linking climate change and recreation areas. An initial 883 records covering 1988–2023 were retrieved from the Web of Science Core Collection; after excluding 65 records published in languages other than English or Turkish, 818 documents were analysed in R using Bibliometrix and Biblioshiny. Publication performance, influential sources, countries, institutions, collaboration networks, keyword co-occurrence, trend topics and three-field relationships were examined. The results show an annual publication growth rate of 11.66% and increasing attention to ecosystem services, adaptation, resilience, sustainability, green infrastructure and protected areas. Scientific production is concentrated in the United States, China, Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom, while highly climate-vulnerable regions, particularly the Mediterranean basin, remain underrepresented. The combined evidence indicates that recreation areas are increasingly conceptualized as multifunctional socio-ecological infrastructure rather than solely as leisure settings. The findings support integrating climate-risk assessment, green-infrastructure protection, recreation equity and ecosystem-based adaptation into recreation-area planning and management for planners and policymakers.