The value of ecosystem services in China: A systematic review for twenty years

•Examining over 3000 publications on ecosystem services research in China from 2001 to 2020.•Suggesting four strict criteria for selecting relevant studies.•Identifying 151 observations with spatial information and 478 records on ecosystem services value.•Establishing a national ecosystem services value database for China. Since the turn of the millennium, studies on the value of ecosystem services have grown significantly in China, producing a rich and diverse literature. However, a systematic review of these findings remains lacking. In this paper, we examine over 3000 studies that have been published over the past twenty years (2001–2020), selecting from this vast corpus 63 articles for more in-depth analysis according to four strict review criteria, in order to provide the basis for building a national database of ecosystem services value. Based on this database, we illustrate the spatial distribution of study sites and ecosystem types, identify the methods applied to quantify physical amounts of ES supply and monetary values, analyze the spatial variation of ES values in different provinces of China, and establish a national empirical value table. We further compare our value table to other value tables in the existing literature and indicate the advantages and shortcomings of our database. Finally, we suggest future research needs in this growing field.