Coastal Vegetation as Nature-Based Solutions: A Bibliometric and Proxy Matrix Review of Ecosystem Services and Coastal Protection

Climate change and coastal development are intensifying coastal hazards and increasing the need for evidence-based Nature-based Solutions (NbSs) in integrated coastal zone management. However, proxy-based evidence for evaluating the ecosystem services and coastal protection functions of coastal vegetation has not been systematically synthesized across these dimensions. This study combined bibliometric analysis using VOSviewer and CiteSpace with metadata-based proxy matrix analysis of 643 English-language Web of Science articles published between 1995 and March 2026. The analysis identified three main research axes: ecological conservation, physical protection and disaster mitigation, and climate change adaptation. Proxy use was clearly differentiated across these axes. Physical/engineering proxies were mainly associated with extreme event regulation and erosion control, whereas ecological proxies were concentrated on genetic diversity, habitat, and life-cycle functions. Climate/adaptation proxies were distributed across several ecosystem service types, whereas social/cultural proxies showed relatively low visibility. These patterns indicate substantial evidence for individual protective and ecological functions, while cross-domain representation of physical, ecological, climate-related, and social/cultural dimensions was comparatively limited within the analyzed corpus. The proxy matrix provides a descriptive framework for organizing proxy-use patterns and identifying directions for developing integrated assessments of multifunctional coastal NbSs.