Quantitative Analysis of the Research Trends and Areas in Grassland Remote Sensing: A Scientometrics Analysis of Web of Science from 1980 to 2020

The state of wildfire and health research: emerging trends, challenges and gaps

BACKGROUND

The increasing frequency and severity of wildfires, exacerbated by climate change, population growth and land use changes, have escalated public health risks. These events are associated with respiratory and cardiovascular diseases and adverse mental health outcomes. Vulnerable populations, including children, older people and those with pre-existing health conditions, face particularly high risks.

METHODS

This study evaluates the existing literature on wildfire-related health impacts. Key variables include publication frequency, geographic distribution, collaborative networks and funding patterns.

RESULTS

Findings reveal a concentration of research in high-income regions, particularly North America and Europe, with limited studies from wildfire-prone but under-represented areas such as Latin America, Oceania, Africa and the Caribbean. This geographical disparity restricts comprehensive understanding and effective public health responses to wildfire impacts. The analysis also underscores the need for interdisciplinary approaches.

CONCLUSIONS

Wildfires continue to pose significant global public health challenges. There is a critical need for more inclusive research efforts, enhanced international collaboration and a stronger focus on health-specific outcomes, especially in under-represented regions. Expanding research in these areas is essential to inform effective public health policies and interventions that address the health risks posed by wildfires worldwide.

What Is the Current Status of Research on the Impact of Digitalization in Medicine? A Bibliometric Analysis

Objectives: This study conducts a bibliometric analysis to map key trends in the digitalization of medicine, a rapidly evolving field that incorporates advancements such as artificial intelligence, telemedicine, and Big Data. The analysis aims to identify the most prolific authors, highly cited works, leading countries, and contributions from research institutions, while also exploring emerging trends through keyword analysis. Methods: A dataset comprising 2606 scientific papers was retrieved from the Web of Science database. The analysis was performed using bibliometric techniques and VOSviewer software to evaluate citation patterns, author productivity, country activity, and institutional contributions. Results: The findings reveal a substantial increase in research activity on the digitalization of medicine, with notable contributions from Germany, the USA, and China. These countries host leading academic institutions actively driving the field. Keyword analysis highlights emerging trends in artificial intelligence, telemedicine, and Big Data. Extensive international collaborations further underscore the global nature of this research domain. This study provides a comprehensive overview of the evolution and current trends in the digitalization of medicine. Conclusions: It highlights the significant role of international collaboration and identifies key areas of development, offering valuable insights for future research directions in this dynamic sector.

Mapping management intensity types in grasslands with synergistic use of Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 satellite images

Grasslands, being vital ecosystems with significant ecological and socio-economic importance, have been the subject of increasing attention due to their role in biodiversity conservation, carbon sequestration, and agricultural productivity. However, accurately classifying grassland management intensity, namely extensive and intensive practices, remains challenging, especially across large spatial extents. This research article presents a comprehensive investigation into the classification of grassland management intensity in two distinct regions of Poland, NUTS2 - namely Podlaskie (PL84) and Wielkopolskie (PL41), by integrating data from Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 satellite imagery. The study leverages the unique capabilities of Sentinel-1, a radar satellite, and Sentinel-2, an optical multispectral satellite, to overcome the limitations of using a single data source. Preprocessed Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 data were combined to extract spectral and textural features, providing valuable insights into grassland characteristics and patterns. Supervised classification using the Random Forest algorithm was used, and ground truth data from field surveys facilitated the creation of training samples. In Podlaskie, extensive grasslands achieved an overall accuracy (OA) of 84%, while intensive grasslands attained an OA of 83%. In Wielkopolskie, extensive grasslands exhibited an OA of 84%, while intensive grasslands achieved an OA of 83%. Additionally, the classification metrics, including user's accuracy (UA), F1 score, and producer's accuracy (PA), further highlighted the variations in classification accuracy. This comprehensive mapping of grassland management intensity using combined Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 data provides valuable insights for conservation agencies, agricultural stakeholders, and land managers. The study's findings contribute to sustainable land management and decision-making processes, facilitating the identification of ecologically valuable areas, optimizing agricultural productivity, and assessing the impacts of different management strategies. Furthermore, the research highlights the potential of Sentinel missions for grassland monitoring and emphasizes the importance of advanced remote sensing techniques for understanding and preserving these crucial ecosystems.

Bibliometric analysis of research trends in agricultural soil organic carbon components from 2000 to 2023

Soil organic carbon is a vital component of the soil carbon pool. Investigation of its composition and dynamics is crucial for enhancing carbon sequestration in soils and for stabilizing the global carbon cycle. In recent years, considerable research has focused on the interactions between soil organic carbon components and their responses to varied land use and agricultural practices. However, the mechanism of soil organic carbon sequestration and response characteristics of soil organic carbon components to soil carbon pools are still subject to some debate. To the best of our knowledge, no researchers have used bibliometric analyses to explore the field of soil organic carbon components. This study thus involved the use of bibliometric techniques to identify research hotspots in the study of organic carbon components over the last 23 years and future trends in research development. Specifically, we performed a comprehensive literature review of 607 documents pertaining to organic carbon components using the Web of Science database, covering the period from 2000 to 2023. Employing CiteSpace, we visualized and analyzed the data across national, institutional, disciplinary, and keyword dimensions. In this study, we conducted a comprehensive, systematic, and quantitative analysis of publications pertaining to organic carbon component research. The results indicate that researchers in the United States and China have substantially influenced the study of soil organic carbon components. Since 2000, the United States has pioneered the study of soil organic carbon components, establishing a foundational role in this field of research. Meanwhile, China leads with the largest number of publications and the most diverse research directions in this field. Among the institutions involved in such research, the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences has the highest number of publications. The investigation of soil organic carbon components within agricultural systems is inherently multidisciplinary, with the most comprehensive research being performed within the soil sciences discipline. At present, the focal areas of research on soil organic carbon components predominantly revolve around the impacts of straw return to fields, varying land-use changes, restoration of vegetation, and the reciprocal effects of soil organic carbon components on the restoration of vegetation. The findings of this work highlight the research hotspots within the field of soil organic carbon components and the emerging trends within this field. This work offers novel insights into the dynamics of soil organic carbon components, potentially guiding future studies in this vital field.

Vulnerability and driving mechanism of four typical grasslands in China under the coupled impacts of climate change and human activities

Understanding of how different grasslands types respond to climate change and human activities across different spatial and temporal dimensions is crucial for devising effective strategies to prevent grasslands degradation. In this study, we developed a novel vulnerability assessment model for grasslands that intricately evaluates the combined impact of climate change and human activities. We then applied this model to analyze the vulnerability and driving mechanism of four representative Chinese grasslands to climate change and human activities. Our findings indicate that the vulnerability of the four grasslands would show a pattern of higher in the west and lower in the east under the influence of climate change alone. However, when human activities are factored in, the vulnerability across the four grasslands tends to homogenize, with human activities notably reducing the vulnerability of alpine grasslands in the west and, conversely, increasing the vulnerability of grasslands in the east. Furthermore, our study reveals distinct major environmental drivers of grasslands vulnerability across different regions. The two western alpine grasslands exhibit higher vulnerability to annual mean temperature and isothermality compared to the eastern temperate grasslands, while their vulnerability to precipitation of the coldest quarter is lower than that of the eastern temperate grasslands. These findings are helpful for understanding the multifaceted causes and mechanisms of grasslands degradation, providing a scientific foundation for the sustainable management and conservation of grassland resources.

Navigating the landscape of global sustainable livelihood research: past insights and future trajectory

Sustainable livelihoods (SL) have emerged as a crucial area of focus in global environmental change research, aligning with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This field is rapidly gaining prominence in sustainability science and has become one of the primary research paradigms. In our study, we conducted scientometrics analysis using the ISI Web of Science core collection database to examine research patterns and frontier areas in SL research. We selected 6441 papers and 265,759 references related to SL published from 1991 to 2020. To achieve this, we employed advanced quantitative analysis tools such as CiteSpace and VOSviewer to quantitatively analyze and visualize the evolution of literature in the SL research field. Our overarching objectives were to understand historical research characteristics, identify the knowledge base, and determine future research trends. The results revealed an exponential increase in SL research documentation since 1991, with the Consortium of International Agricultural Research Center (CGIAR) contributing the highest volume of research documents and citations. Key journals in this field included World Development, Global Environmental Change, Ecological Economics, and Ecology and Society. Notably, Singh RK and Shackleton CM emerged as prolific authors in SL research. Through our analysis, we identified six primary clusters of research areas: livelihoods, conservation, food security, management, climate change, and ecosystem services. Additionally, we found that tags such as rural household, agricultural intensification, cultural intensification, and livelihoods vulnerability remained relevant and represented active research hotspots. By analyzing keyword score relevance, we identified frontier areas in SL research, including mass tourism, solar home systems, artisanal and small-scale mining, forest quality, marine-protected areas, agricultural sustainability, sustainable rangeland management, and indigenous knowledge. These findings provide valuable insights to stakeholders regarding the historical, current, and future trends in SL research, offering strategic opportunities to enhance the sustainability of livelihoods for farmers and rural communities in alignment with the SDGs.

Knowledge domain and research progress in the field of crop rotation from 2000 to 2020: a scientometric review

As one of the most fundamental and prevalent agronomic practices, crop rotation is of great significance for the optimization of regional planting structure and sustainable agricultural development. Therefore, crop rotation has attracted continuous attention from both researchers and producers worldwide. In recent years, many review articles have been published in the field of crop rotation. However, since most reviews usually focus on specialized directions and topics, only few systematic quantitative reviews and comprehensive analysis can fully determine the state of research. To address this knowledge gap, we present a scientometric review to determine the current research status of crop rotation by using CiteSpace software. The main findings were as follows: (1) From 2000 to 2020, five knowledge domains were identified as representing the intellectual base of crop rotation: (a) synergism and comparison of conservation agriculture measures or other management measures; (b) soil microecology, pest control, weed control, and plant disease control; (c) soil carbon sequestration and greenhouse gases (GHGs) emissions; (d) organic crop rotation and double cropping patterns; and (e) soil properties and crop productivity. (2) Six notable research fronts were identified: (a) plant-soil microbial interactions under crop rotation; (b) integrated effect with minimum soil disturbance and crop retention; (c) carbon sequestration and GHG emission reduction; (d) impact on weed control; (e) heterogeneity of rotation effects under different weather and soil conditions; and (f) comparison between long-term and short-term rotation. Overall, this study provides a comprehensive overview of crop rotation and proposes some future development trends for the researchers.

Research hotspots and frontiers in agricultural multispectral technology: Bibliometrics and scientometrics analysis of the Web of Science

Multispectral technology has a wide range of applications in agriculture. By obtaining spectral information during crop production, key information such as growth, pests and diseases, fertilizer and pesticide application can be determined quickly, accurately and efficiently. The scientific analysis based on Web of Science aims to understand the research hotspots and areas of interest in the field of agricultural multispectral technology. The publications related to agricultural multispectral research in agriculture between 2002 and 2021 were selected as the research objects. The softwares of CiteSpace, VOSviewer, and Microsoft Excel were used to provide a comprehensive review of agricultural multispectral research in terms of research areas, institutions, influential journals, and core authors. Results of the analysis show that the number of publications increased each year, with the largest increase in 2019. Remote sensing, imaging technology, environmental science, and ecology are the most popular research directions. The journal Remote Sensing is one of the most popular publishers, showing a high publishing potential in multispectral research in agriculture. The institution with the most research literature and citations is the USDA. In terms of the number of papers, Mtanga is the author with the most published articles in recent years. Through keyword co-citation analysis, it is determined that the main research areas of this topic focus on remote sensing, crop classification, plant phenotypes and other research areas. The literature co-citation analysis indicates that the main research directions concentrate in vegetation index, satellite remote sensing applications and machine learning modeling. There is still a lot of room for development of multi-spectrum technology. Further development can be carried out in the areas of multi-device synergy, spectral fusion, airborne equipment improvement, and real-time image processing technology, which will cooperate with each other to further play the role of multi-spectrum in agriculture and promote the development of agriculture.

Characteristics of nitrogen deposition research within grassland ecosystems globally and its insight from grassland microbial community changes in China

As global change continues to intensify, the mode and rate of nitrogen input from the atmosphere to grassland ecosystems had changed dramatically. Firstly, we conducted a systematic analysis of the literature on the topic of nitrogen deposition impacts over the past 30 years using a bibliometric analysis. A systematic review of the global research status, publication patterns, research hotspots and important literature. We found a large number of publications in the Chinese region, and mainly focuses on the field of microorganisms. Secondly, we used a meta-analysis to focus on microbial changes using the Chinese grassland ecosystem as an example. The results show that the research on nitrogen deposition in grassland ecosystems shows an exponential development trend, and the authors and research institutions of the publications are mainly concentrated in China, North America, and Western Europe. The keyword clustering results showed 11 important themes labeled climate change, elevated CO2, species richness and diversity, etc. in these studies. The burst keyword analysis indicated that temperature sensitivity, microbial communities, etc. are the key research directions. The results of the meta-analysis found that nitrogen addition decreased soil microbial diversity, and different ecosystems may respond differently. Treatment time, nitrogen addition rate, external environmental conditions, and pH had major effects on microbial alpha diversity and biomass. The loss of microbial diversity and the reduction of biomass with nitrogen fertilizer addition will alter ecosystem functioning, with dramatic impacts on global climate change. The results of the study will help researchers to further understand the subject and have a deep understanding of research hotspots, which are of great value to future scientific research.

A Bibliometric and Visualized Analysis of Research Progress and Trends in Rice Remote Sensing over the Past 42 Years (1980–2021)

Rice is one of the most important food crops around the world. Remote sensing technology, as an effective and rapidly developing method, has been widely applied to precise rice management. To observe the current research status in the field of rice remote sensing (RRS), a bibliometric analysis was carried out based on 2680 papers of RRS published during 1980–2021, which were collected from the core collection of the Web of Science database. Quantitative analysis of the number of publications, top countries and institutions, popular keywords, etc. was conducted through the knowledge mapping software CiteSpace, and comprehensive discussions were carried out from the aspects of specific research objects, methods, spectral variables, and sensor platforms. The results revealed that an increasing number of countries and institutions have conducted research on RRS and a great number of articles have been published annually, among which, China, the United States of America, and Japan were the top three and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Zhejiang University, and Nanjing Agricultural University were the first three research institutions with the largest publications. Abundant interest was paid to “reflectance”, followed by “vegetation index” and “yield” and the specific objects mainly focused on growth, yield, area, stress, and quality. From the perspective of spectral variables, reflectance, vegetation index, and back-scattering coefficient appeared the most frequently in the frontiers. In addition to satellite remote sensing data and empirical models, unmanned air vehicle (UAV) platforms and artificial intelligence models have gradually become hot topics. This study enriches the readers’ understanding and highlights the potential future research directions in RRS.

Satellite Altimetry: Achievements and Future Trends by a Scientometrics Analysis

Scientometric reviews, facilitated by computational and visual analytical approaches, allow researchers to gain a thorough understanding of research trends and areas of concentration from a large number of publications. With the fast development of satellite altimetry, which has been effectively applied to a wide range of research topics, it is timely to summarize the scientific achievements of the previous 50 years and identify future trends in this field. A comprehensive overview of satellite altimetry was presented using a total of 8541 publications from the Web of Science Core Collection covering the years from 1970 to 2021. We begin by presenting the fundamental statistical results of the publications, such as the annual number of papers, study categories, countries/regions, afflictions, journals, authors, and keywords, in order to provide a comprehensive picture of satellite altimetry research. We discuss the co-occurrence of the authors in order to reveal the global collaboration network of satellite altimetry research. Finally, we utilised co-citation networks to detect the development trend and associated crucial publications for various specific topics. The findings show that satellite altimetry research has been changed immensely during the last half-century. The United States, France, China, England, and Germany made the most significant contributions in the field of satellite altimetry. The analysis reveals a clear link between technology advancements and the trend in satellite altimetry research. As a result, wide swath altimetry, GNSS-reflectometry, laser altimetry, terrestrial hydrology, and deep learning are among the most frontier study subjects. The findings of this work could guide a thorough understanding of satellite altimetry’s overall development and research front.