CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

In the last decade, the use of ?socio-ecological system? term in the literature has experienced an exponential growth. This may be a new sign of the Anthropocene: the recognition that the unprecedented interaction in its depth and scale between humans and nature requires a new tool for interdisciplinary research. We explore if that growth is a fashionable mainstream, empty of significance,or actually means a new concept and approach on the integration of social and ecological sciences,supported by theory and data. To do so, we analyzed the use of the term in the literature through a two-step analysis. First, we described the main trends: its evolution, journals, institutions and topics dealing with ?socio-ecological systems?. Then, we examined the spatial and temporal scales used and the variables analyzed in 13% of all studies. We highlight the following results: 1) the search throws a total of 1289 papers, from which 95% has been published during the last decade and 31.7% in the last two years, showing an exponential growth in the use of the term. 2) From the papers analyzed, 13% gather field data of biophysical and sociological variables. Most of them only consider one type of variable, and many others are discussion papers, that do not present primary data. 3) The main spatial scale at which socio-ecosystems are analyzed is local -community- (50%), followed by regional (26%) and in the last place, global scales based on reviews of secondary data. Finally, 30% of studies that analyzed systems in developing countries were conducted from institutions of developed countries. Our results suggest that the term ?socio-ecological system? is in the wave of recent publications aimed at interdisciplinary research. However, we found that these publications lack of explicit efforts to integrate social and biophysical data and therefore a gap between theory and data.