Progress of Ecological Restoration Research Based on Bibliometric Analysis

Xi Wei; Wei Song; Ya Shao; Xiangwen Cai

doi:10.3390/ijerph20010520

Progress of Ecological Restoration Research Based on Bibliometric Analysis

Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2022 Dec 28;20(1):520. doi: 10.3390/ijerph20010520.

Authors

Xi Wei^{1

2}, Wei Song^{1

3}, Ya Shao², Xiangwen Cai²

Affiliations

¹ Key Laboratory of Land Surface Pattern and Simulation, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China.
² School of Earth Sciences, Guilin University of Technology, Guilin 541000, China.
³ Hebei Collaborative Innovation Center for Urban-Rural Integration Development, Shijiazhuang 050061, China.

Abstract

With the deterioration of the global/regional ecological environment, ecological restoration plays an important role in sustainable development. However, due to the differences in research methods, objectives, and perspectives, the research results are highly diverse. This makes it necessary to sort the publications related to ecological restoration, clarify the research status, grasp the research hotspots, and predict the future research trends. Here, 23,755 articles from the core database of Web of Science were retrieved, and bibliometric analysis was carried out to understand the global ecological restoration research progress from 1990 to 2022 from a macro perspective, with the aim to determine the future development direction. The results are as follows. (1) From 1990 to 2022, the number of publications in the field of ecological restoration constantly increased, and the fluctuation of the average annual citations increased. The most important articles were published in high-ranking journals. (2) Ecological restoration covers a wide range of research areas, including biodiversity, ecosystem services, climate change, land use, and ecological restoration theories and technologies. The four main hotspots in this field are heavy metal removal, soil microbial biomass carbon and nitrogen concentrations, grassland ecological restoration, and evaluation framework and modeling of ecological restoration's effects. Currently, studies focus on river basin remediation, heavy metal removal, and forest restoration. (3) Future ecological restoration research should strengthen the multi-object aspect and multi-scale ecological restoration research, improve the ecological restoration effect evaluation system, and incorporate social and economic issues. This study identified current research hotspots and predicted potential future research directions, providing a scientific reference for future studies in the field of ecological restoration.

Keywords: Bibliometrix; Web of Science; ecological restoration; research direction; research focus.

Publication types

Review
Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Bibliometrics
Biodiversity
Biomass
Ecosystem*
Forests*

Grants and funding

This research was funded by the Second Tibetan Plateau Scientific Expedition and Research (grant number 2019QZKK0603), and the Project of National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant number 42071233).