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Article

Dryland Ecological Restoration Research Dynamics: A Bibliometric Analysis Based on Web of Science Data

by
Xiaoliang Shi
1,
Xinyue Zhang
1,
Shuaiyu Lu
2,
Tielong Wang
3,
Jiayi Zhang
1,
Yuanpeng Liang
1 and
Jifeng Deng
1,4,*
1
College of Economics and Management, Shenyang Agricultural University, Shenyang 110866, China
2
Accounting Finance & Strategic Investment Business School, Newcastle University, Newcastle NE1 4HZ, UK
3
Chinese Academy of Inspection and Quarantine, Beijing 100176, China
4
College of Forestry, Shenyang Agricultural University, Shenyang 110866, China
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Sustainability 2022, 14(16), 9843; https://doi.org/10.3390/su14169843
Submission received: 15 June 2022 / Revised: 15 July 2022 / Accepted: 6 August 2022 / Published: 9 August 2022
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Soil and Water Conservation in Mountainous Area)
Browse Figures
Versions Notes

Abstract

:
Previous research on ecological restoration mainly includes three fields: water ecology, soil ecology, and atmospheric ecology, and the most abundant is in the field of soil ecology, among which the most abundant is in dryland ecological restoration. Research on dryland ecological restoration is very important in ensuring national food security, ecological security, and preventing a return to poverty. However, the previous research results do not clearly present the interconnection between the huge number of existing dryland ecological restoration studies and do not provide a three-dimensional understanding of the whole picture of dryland ecological restoration research from a broader perspective. Research on dryland ecological restoration has received wide attention from scholars at home and abroad, revealing the international research trends in the current field, which will provide a reference for the theory and practice of future dryland ecological restoration research. Using the SCI-E and SSCI databases of the “Web of Science Core Collection” as sample data sources and using CiteSpace optical measurement software, the 2254 literature in the field of international dryland ecological restoration research were systematically analyzed to track the situation and impact of research in this field by countries around the world, scientific research institutions and significant authors, and to analyze the interdisciplinary and research hotspots in this field, which is of great significance for the follow-up research of dryland ecological restoration. The research results show that: (1) The number of publications in international dryland ecological restoration has increased significantly with years and has strong development potential. (2) Journals representing the research frontier have an intense concentration with various journals. (3) The study of dryland ecological restoration belongs to a highly interdisciplinary discipline, while the two disciplines of ecology and environmental science are the pivot nodes of multidisciplinary disciplines. (4) China’s posts and total citations are among the best, but the average citation is low. (5) Dryland ecological restoration and protection is a hot research field at present, and special attention is paid to the dynamic changes and key driving factors of dryland ecological restoration and the full use of machine learning and extensive data mining to solve complex social-ecological problems. The study recommends that related disciplines must strengthen cooperation in the field of dryland ecological restoration, especially the two disciplines of ecology and environmental science, in order to promote the progress of dryland ecological restoration research theory and practice. China should continue to strengthen the investment of scientific research forces to improve the international influence of research in the field of dryland ecological restoration.

1. Introduction

With the continuous development of the global economy and the constant increase of the population, the ecological environment is facing tremendous pressure [1,2]. Especially with the continuous advancement of industrialization, water pollution, air pollution, soil pollution, and other kinds of ecological and environmental pollution events are occurring at a high incidence, which seriously affects and hinders the survival and development of human beings. In addition to the transformation of economic growth, ecological restoration has also been put on an influential agenda. The problem of environmental restoration was first proposed by British scholars in the 1980s [3], mainly referring to the use of appropriate interventions or means to restore the damaged ecological environment and restore the original characteristics and functions of the ecological environment, as far as possible to alleviate the trend of environmental environment deterioration [4], belongs to the category of applied environmental disciplines; other countries and scholars have followed up, and after decades of development, international ecological restoration research has accumulated fruitful results.
Previous research on ecological restoration has been summarized into three main environmental fields: First, research in the field of water ecology. Water resources are among the most critical resources for human production and life. Therefore, the restoration of water resources is a vital component of ecological restoration, as Wang and Shangguan [5] believe that water resources are the foundation of human development and civilization. How to rectify the deteriorating environmental environment, prevent soil erosion, and repair and rebuild damaged ecosystems has become the key to the construction of ecological civilization. Zhao et al. [6] propose an optimization framework for sponge city construction, advocate ecological and hydrological restoration in theory, focus on integrating ecological and hydrological approaches to improve the urban hydrological spatial system in terms of technical methods, and take environmental restoration as an essential construction method to enhance the resilience of cities to disasters. Wang and Huang [7] explore the development process of foreign river ecological restoration concepts and engineering technologies, expound the current situation and practice of river environmental restoration in China, and propose conducting research on river environmental restoration based on river characteristics, environmental processes, and river basins. Mao et al. [8] pointed out that the ecological restoration of complex microbiota has become a commonly used sewage treatment technology in enterprises.
Second, research in the field of soil ecology. Soil is the essential natural resource on which humans depend, and soil pollution caused by mineral exploitation and indiscriminate logging of vegetation must be remedied. Several studies on heavy metal contaminated soil’s environmental remediation and organically polluted soil are summarized, such as Zhou et al. [9]. It is noted that the environmental remediation of contaminated soil is still in the primary stage. Still, it can be expected that the environmental remediation of polluted soil will become the key to resolve the problem of soil pollution. Yang et al. [10] believe that although this “marginal effect” of the quicksand treatment plot is challenging to eliminate fundamentally, it can be weakened by expanding the area of the treatment plot because it can reduce the area ratio of the edge of the treatment plot to the core part, ensuring that a more significant proportion of the core part can quickly restore the sandy vegetation. Wu et al. [11] suggested that mushroom residue can be invoked as a modifier for manganese slag, which can significantly improve the properties of slag and promote plant growth and repair.
Third, research in the field of atmospheric ecology. Frequent smog around the world is the most prominent example of atmospheric and ecological pollution related to human survival and health, for which many scholars have explored the environmental restoration of the atmosphere, such as Feng [12] in the Yangtze River Delta region “coal to electricity transmission” effect evaluation, and the atmospheric and ecological restoration have been explored. The results show that the larger the tax, the more pronounced the environmental governance effect, but the Yangtze River Delta region will relatively reduce the corresponding economic indicators. Lu et al. [13], pointing out that air pollution is one of the environmental crises facing humanity, proposed that urban greening plants can be selected according to their ability to repair air pollution, which is a meaningful way and means to reduce air pollution. He et al. [14] proposed that atmospheric remediation techniques such as “phytoremediation as the mainstay, spray repair, catalytic decomposition repair, and microbial decomposition repair as a supplement” can be used to purify atmospheric pollutants. Overall, there are more and more research results in the field of soil ecology, among which the most research results are in dryland ecological restoration. In addition, it can be seen from the research in the three ecological fields that the research on ecological restoration involves multidisciplinary intersections such as environmental science, ecology, soil science, geology, and water resources science.
From the limited previous literature review on the ecological restoration of drylands, it is clear that drylands generally refer to arable land without irrigation facilities and relying mainly on natural precipitation to grow dry crops, including arable land without irrigation facilities and relying only on flood diversion and silt irrigation. Research on ecological restoration of drylands is very important in ensuring national food security, ecological security, and preventing a return to poverty. However, previous research results do not clearly present the interconnections among the huge number of existing dryland ecological restoration studies and do not provide a three-dimensional understanding of the whole picture of dryland ecological restoration research from a broader perspective. As an essential quantitative analysis method of literature, CiteSpace can effectively describe the overall development of a discipline or research field [15,16,17] and has been widely used to measure the performance of various research fields. At the same time, the knowledge graph can combine information visualization technology with traditional bibliometric analysis to generate different types of knowledge graphs through data mining, information processing, scientific measurement, graph drawing, etc., and display more intuitive information for researchers [18,19,20]. Therefore, this study explores the current status of international research on dryland ecological restoration based on the Web of Science database using CiteSpace software, and traces the frontiers of research in this field. Specifically, we tracked the research trends and impacts in the field of dryland ecological restoration by countries, research institutions, and major authors around the world and analyzed the interdisciplinary intersections and research hotspots in this field, which is of great importance for the subsequent research on dryland ecological restoration.

2. Materials and Methods

2.1. Data Sources

This paper used the “Web of Science Core Collection” as the literature retrieval platform and selects the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-E) and Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) databases, and the search period was 2009–2021. Considering the concentration and accuracy of the literature, the search strategy was set to TI = (“ecological restoration” or “drylands” or “land degradation” or “land degradation neutrality”) AND language: (English) AND document type: (Article).
The title in document retrieval is the title of the retrieval article, and the theme is to retrieve the article by retrieving the theme of each article. In the retrieval process, in order to simplify, most of the documents are retrieved by the method of theme or keyword. If you know the full name of the document, you can quickly and accurately retrieve the document by way of its title, which can avoid retrieving a large number of miscellaneous and useless articles and finally determine the sample size of 2254 documents. The retrieved file record download was saved as a plain text file in the format “Full Record and Cited References” as a sample of the data analyzed in this article.

2.2. Methods

CiteSpace software is one of the most effective analytical tools in bibliometric analysis [21,22] and is a Java application for literature analysis visualization developed by Chen Chaomei, a Chinese scholar at Drexel University in the United States [23]. This article uses version 5.8 R3.
CiteSpace software’s collaborative network analysis, co-existential network analysis, and other statistical analysis capabilities can help scholars objectively understand the current status of the target research field in terms of time, research institutions and members, research keywords, and highly cited literature [24,25]. To meet the requirements of using these functions, this article set the software parameters as follows:
(1)
Time slicing was 2009–2021, and the year of each slice (Years Per Slice) = 1.
(2)
Node types select Study Honor, Institution, Country, Keyword, Category, Reference, Cited Author, and Cited Journal, respectively.
(3)
On Selection Criteria, set to default.
(4)
On the trim settings, “Pathfinder” and “Pruning sliced networks” were selected for most of this article, and only “Pruning the merged network” was set for keyword co-occurrence analysis. The others continued to be the default settings.

3. Results and Analysis

3.1. Analysis of the Basic Characteristics of Literature

3.1.1. Amount of Text

Changes in the volume of literature published are an essential indicator of research in a particular field [26,27] in the time range 2009–2021 (statistics as of 20 January 2022, cannot represent the entire year of data, so the 13 articles published in 2022 were deleted). The number of publications in the field of international dryland ecological restoration (Figure 1) has increased, showing that this field has received widespread attention from scholars and has strong development potential.
As shown in Figure 1, there have been three breakthroughs in the number of articles in the field of dryland ecological restoration in 2009–2021. The first time was in 2013, when the number of articles published exceeded 100 for the first time. Previously, the number of articles published was prolonged, and after 2009, it began to grow steadily, and the research results gradually increased. The second time was in 2018 when the number of articles published exceeded 200 for the first time, and since then, the number of articles published has proliferated, until the third time, in 2021, when the number of articles published that year exceeded 300 for the first time, and it is expected that the number of articles published will continue to grow after that. An average of 172 papers were published annually between 2009 and 2021.

3.1.2. Main Source Journals

By analyzing the international research on dryland ecological restoration, a total of the top 10 journals with citation frequency and intermediary centrality (Table 1), it can be found that these journals have the characteristics of a broad research field and a high concentration of articles.
From Table 1, it can be found that the top three journals with a total of cited frequencies are Science, Nature, and Journal of Arid Environments, and the three journals lead the international frontier of dryland ecological restoration research. The top three journals with high mediation centers are Science of the Total Environment, Environmental Science & Policy, and Climatic Change. The most robust mediation centre is 0.05, indicating that related research in dryland ecological restoration is generally published in these three journals. At the same time, it shows that there is not a complete correspondence between journals with a high volume of publication and high citation.

3.2. Interdisciplinary Analysis

In the process of knowledge development in the past few decades, emerging fields and technologies have all involved and promoted the deconstruction and reconstruction of the structural relationships of related disciplines, thus making interdisciplinary research generally regarded as a path of scientific and technological innovation [28]. To explore the interdisciplinary state in the field of dryland ecological restoration, the study builds a multidisciplinary network based on the Web of Science database with the help of the multidisciplinary co-occurrence analysis map (Figure 2).
It can be found from Figure 2 that the disciplines involved in the study of dryland ecological restoration mainly include environmental science and ecology, environmental science and ecology, agriculture, soil science, geology, engineering, water resources, biodiversity and conservation, and science and technology, and are highly cross-cutting. Among them, environmental science and ecology, environmental science, and ecology have many publications. From the perspective of centrality, the centrality of ecology is the highest at 0.29, and the centrality of ecological science is 0.23, indicating that these two disciplines have the most in the field of dryland environmental restoration research, and the connection with other disciplines is relatively close, which is the hub node of multidisciplinary domains.

3.3. Analysis of Major Research Countries, Scientific Research Institutions, and Authors

3.3.1. The Main Research Countries

The number of articles, total citations, and average citations of the top 10 countries in the field of dryland ecological restoration research in the international community are shown in Table 2.
From Table 2, it can be seen that in terms of the number of articles published, the number of articles published in the top nine countries exceeded 100. China’s number of articles published was 583, ranking first. The United States published 517 papers and ranks second only to China. The top three countries are the United States, China, and Spain in terms of total citation indicators. Canada had the highest average citations of 44.90 of the top 10 countries, followed by Spain (39.33) and Australia (36.18). It can also be seen that although China has the most significant number of posts among the 10 countries, the average number of citations is the lowest (21.53 times).
The study also used the Collaborative Network Atlas to continue exploring the situation of dryland ecological remediation research volumes in countries, as shown in Figure 3.
The outer ring colour of the node formed in Figure 3 represents the number of posts published as of 20 January 2022 (the same below), which is consistent with the results of Table 2. That is, the dryland ecological restoration research is mainly based in 10 countries; China, the United States, Australia, Germany, Spain, the United Kingdom, Italy, France, Brazil, and Canada. European countries have studied the field a lot, with 5 out of the top 10 countries having studied it: Germany, Spain, the United Kingdom, Italy, and France.

3.3.2. The Main Scientific Research Institutions

The number of articles published, total citations, and average citations of the top 10 scientific research institutions in the field of dryland ecological restoration research in the world are shown in Table 3.
From Table 3, it can be found that the average number of articles published by the top 10 scientific research institutions in the world is 63.4, but there are only three scientific research institutions that exceed the average number of articles. They are all in China, namely the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Beijing Normal University. Regarding the number of articles published, the Chinese Academy of Sciences ranked first with 217 articles. Also publishing more than 50 articles are the University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Beijing Normal University. The top three scientific research institutions are the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Rey Juan Carlos University, and Beijing Normal University in terms of the total citation index. In terms of average citations, among the top 10 scientific research institutions, the Spanish Rey Juan Carlos University has the highest average of 75.65 times, followed by the Spanish Council of Higher Research with 47.94 times, and the third place is the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom (33.16 times).
Whether it is the number of articles published, the total number of citations, or the average citation, China’s scientific research institutions are in the top few, and the scientific research potential is excellent. At the same time, it should be emphasized that although the number of articles published by the University of Rey Juan Carlos in Spain is only 37, the total number of citations has reached 2799 times (second only to the Chinese Academy of Sciences), with an average of 75.65 citations, ranking first among 10 scientific research institutions. The Spanish Council of Higher Scientific Research, also from Spain, has only 36 articles with 1726 citations. Still, the average number of sources is as high as 47.94 times, second only to the Rey Juan Carlos University, ranking second among the top 10 scientific research institutions, showing Spain’s extensive influence in dryland ecological restoration research.
The study also used collaborative network atlases to continue exploring the extent of dryland ecological restoration research loads in various research institutions, as shown in Figure 4.
It can be found from Figure 4 that among the research institutions for dryland ecological restoration, universities are the mainstay, and the proportion is relatively high. Among them, 7 of the top 10 scientific research institutions in terms of article volume are universities: the Chinese Academic of Science, University Chinese Academic Science, Beijing Normal University, University Western Australia, University Leeds, US Geological Survey, University Rey Juan Carlos, Northwest A&F University, CSIC, and Beijing Forestry University.

3.3.3. Main Author

The characteristics of the 10 major authors and their teams in the field of international research on ecological remediation in drylands are shown in Table 4 and Figure 5.
From Table 4, it can be found that as far as the principal authors are concerned, Spain’s Fernando T Maestre and Italy’s Luca Salvati dominate the rankings, reaching more than 30 articles each, which is more than three times the number of articles published by Martin Brandt from Denmark, in 10th place. The remaining authors are mainly from France, Australia, the United Kingdom, Denmark, and China.
As far as the research team is concerned, the international dryland ecological restoration research has formed five distinct author groups with significant research team effects and more prominent research results. This conclusion can be drawn from a collaborative network diagram (Figure 5) of the dryland ecological remediation study authors.
Each node in Figure 5 represents an author; the larger the node indicates the greater the number of articles for that author. The connection between nodes indicates the cooperation between authors, and the thicker the link indicates, the closer the affiliation. The author collaboration network in Figure 5 consists of 559 authors and 777 pooled threads, demonstrating the many researchers and extensive collaboration in international dryland ecological remediation research. The collaborators and research areas of the five essential research teams are as follows:
(1)
The research team (blue circled area) with Fernando T. Maestre as the core published many articles, reaching 39 articles. Fernando T. Maestre has a closer connection with authors such as Manuel Delgado-Baquerizo and David J. Eldridge, but according to the colour of the relationship between the nodes, it can be seen that cooperation between the three mainly occurred in 2013, 2016, and 2018. There are also partnerships between Fernando T. Maestre’s research team and Santiago Soliveres, but most occurred before 2012. Fernando T. Maestre’s research team focuses on drylands and ecosystems’ carbon cycles and versatility [29,30,31,32].
(2)
The research team (brown circle area) with Luca Salvati as the core published many articles, reaching 35 articles. Luca Salvati’s research team focuses on land degradation risks [33,34,35,36,37] and desertification risks [38]. Luca Salvati’s research team published five papers in 2015, but no articles were published in 2018 and 2019. In the author’s collaborative network map, it can also be found that the outer circle colour of the node formed is orange, indicating that the Luca Salvati research team has been active in the past two years, which is consistent with the actual situation of four articles published in 2021 and two articles in 2022, which shows that the Luca Salvati research team will continue to explore the field of dryland ecological restoration in the future.
(3)
The research team led by James Aronson (green circle area). Although James Aronson’s research team published 21 papers, it has not published any papers since 2020. James Aronson’s research team focuses on ecological restoration [39,40,41].
(4)
The Chinese research team (pink circle area) with BOJIE FU as the core published 11 articles. The BOJIE FU research team focuses on ecosystem services [42,43], ecological restoration, and drylands [44,45].
(5)
Rasmus Fensholt and Martin Brandt’s research team (black circle area). Although the number of articles published by the research team is not much, there are more connections between nodes formed, the cooperation network is more mature and independent, and the relationship is close. The team’s research included long-term dynamic monitoring of dryland biomass [46], land degradation and remediation [47], and carbon storage [48], but found that the team had not published a paper since 2019.

3.4. The Literature Cited for Analysis

Co-citation refers to the fact that two or more papers are cited by one or more documents simultaneously, which is a research method to measure the degree of relationship between literature. To a certain extent, the number of citations in the literature can reflect the hot spots and trends of research, and the number of literature sources can also reflect the importance of the article. Therefore, the exploration literature has been cited, which is very helpful for exploring the dynamics of dryland ecological restoration research. According to the centrality of the co-cited literature, the top five literatures are shown in Table 5 and Figure 6.
As shown from Table 5, in a central order, the countries of the top three authors are Germany, the United States, and Denmark. Among them, the most prominent is 0.16, which is from the 2017 German scholar Akhtar-Schuster M’s “Unpacking the Concept of Land Degradation Neutrality and Addressing Its Operation through the Rio Conventions”, which mainly explores land degradation neutrality, desertification, and sustainable land management.
As can be seen from Figure 6, in the high-frequency co-cited literature in the central order, second only to the article by German Akhtar-Schuster M. is “Global Desertification: Building a Science for Dryland Development” published by Reynolds JF in 2007; the study mainly reviewed the function of dryland ecosystems and explored the problem of desertification. At the same time, a development paradigm for drylands was proposed. The centrality of the remaining three documents is also stronger at 0.15, 0.12, and 0.12, and it can be seen from the title of the literature that “desertification” has been a topic of ongoing concern for scholars for at least 10 years.

3.5. Research Hotspot Analysis

3.5.1. Keywords Are Present

The keywords reflect the author’s research direction and scientific research interests [54,55]. Since the leading research content of the article is highly condensed, others can quickly browse the keywords of the article to obtain adequate information such as research objectives, research content, research methods, and views held by the author [56,57]. Therefore, analyzing the frequency of keywords in the literature is the key to discussing the research hotspots in a particular field and their development and changes [58,59].
Using the keyword co-occurrence analysis function of CiteSpace software, the study drew a keyword co-occurrence network map for dryland ecological restoration research and measured the main research hotspots in this field (Figure 7). Through the threshold setting, Figure 7 only showed keywords with a frequency greater than or equal to 148 times. Each node in the graph represents a keyword, and the larger node indicates that the keyword appears more frequently. Similarly, the width of the wire indicates the frequency with which keywords appear together, and the thicker line indicates a higher frequency between two keywords.
From Figure 7, it can be seen that keywords with a frequency greater than or equal to 148 times are ranked in the top 10. Specifically, management (242 times), vegetation (230 times), impact (217 times), conservation (201 times), biodiversity (186 times), climate change (172 times), desertification (167 times), dynamics (165 times), diversity (151 times), and ecosystem service (148 times) have become virtual nodes in the network because of their high frequency.
These critical nodes cover several central aspects of international dryland ecological restoration research: first, it can be found that scholars carry out dryland ecological restoration research around the starting point of “how to manage” and “impact” and “protection”; second, the research directions that scholars are mainly concerned about are “biodiversity”, “climate change”, “desertification”, “diversity” and “ecosystem services”; third, the emergence of “dynamics” keywords. This may indicate that scholars are concerned with the dynamic change of dryland ecological restoration or the driving force research that promotes the evolution of dryland environmental restoration.
In order to facilitate the exploration of which keywords are more closely related, the keywords of dryland ecological restoration research are clustered, as shown in Figure 8.
As can be seen from Figure 8, the keywords of dryland ecological restoration research are clustered into 10 categories, namely detecting land degradation, urban area, environmental outcome, waste rock tip, physical modelling, driving force, erosion-induced land degradation, social-ecological systems approach, sustainable livelihood development, and combating soil loss. The order is from 0 to 9. The smaller the number, the more keywords are included in the cluster. Each cluster is composed of multiple closely related keywords; the cluster details are now exported through the report, as shown in Table 6. In this network, it is necessary to pay attention to the average profile value of clustering, which identifies the quality of clustering results. It is generally believed that when the average contour value of clustering is more significant than 0.5, the clustering is reasonable; when the average clustering value is greater than 0.7, the clustering is convincing.
From Table 6, it can be found that the average contour values of the top 10 clusters in the dryland ecological restoration study are more significant than 0.7, indicating that the clustering results presented are convincing. This also confirms the correctness of the survey to choose dryland environmental restoration as the title of the article, such as #0 clustering: detecting land degradation, which mainly contains the following: detecting land degradation; land degradation assessment; human-induced land degradation; NDVI3G soil moisture; using residual trend analysis. It can be seen that themes related to monitoring and assessment of land degradation, anthropogenic-induced land degradation, normalized vegetation index, and residual trend analysis are all roughly the same, and similarly, the themes under the other nine clustering tags are all roughly the same.

3.5.2. Keyword Prominence

CiteSpace provides the function of burst detection, which is mainly used to detect situations where there is a significant change in the number of references in a certain period. Emergent detection is considered an indicator of highly active research fields, which can explore emerging trends and fleeting trends and provide a precise visual analysis of the duration of research hotspots in domestic and foreign academic circles. The higher the intensity of keyword prominence, the more pronounced the research orientation, which is the node that needs to be paid attention to in research. The study used CiteSpace’s burst function to plot the intensity of a total of 25 keywords from 2009 to 2022, as shown in Figure 9. Among them, Strength indicates the power of the sudden start, Begin indicates the year of the sudden start, End indicates the year of the premature termination, and the “red part” is the year of the keyword prominence.
From Figure 9, it can be found that, first, during the period 2009–2022, the keyword with the highest intensity of the burst was “conservation”. The Strength value reached 6.08. The start of the explosion was in 2012, and the end of the shot was in 2013. Its practical background is that at the end of 2011, the United Nations Environment Programme “Towards a Green Economy” report was published and pointed out that the green economy could significantly reduce environmental risks and ecological scarcity, advocating that human beings should protect existing resources. Thus, resource protection received a new round of attention, but due to the immature technology of land degradation restoration and resource protection at the time, and because humans were unaware of how much harmful impact resource consumption had on the environment, scholars’ enthusiasm quickly faded after a year.
Secondly, the keywords “science”, “desertification”, “population”, “river restoration”, “governance”, “region”, and “heavy metal” have attracted much attention, and the intensity of the emergence is greater than 4, but with the continuous refinement and maturity of dryland ecological restoration research, in addition to the “heavy metal” keyword, attention to the remaining keywords has declined.
Finally, the keywords “tree”, “heavy metal”, “river basin”, and “land-use change” have maintained a high intensity of prominence and great attention since 2019. In the context of global climate change, forest ecosystems and watershed systems have been entrusted with heavy responsibilities, requiring rich metal treatment and land-use methods to be improved accordingly. As a result, researchers have paid more attention to related research, and the frequency of keywords has increased.

4. Discussion

The Institute of Dryland Ecological Restoration involves more disciplines and is more cross-cutting [60,61]. Therefore, it is recommended that related disciplines should strengthen cooperation and communication, especially the two disciplines of ecology and environmental science, which are multidisciplinary pivotal nodes, to promote the progress of dryland ecological restoration research theory and practice. The average number of citations of research results in the field of dryland ecological restoration in China is very low. It is critical to continue investing in research power and expanding international influence. The future research hotspot in the field of dryland ecological restoration is still how to protect resources, ecology, biodiversity, and reduce the impact of climate change and desertification for the purpose of promoting research on the dynamic changes and key driving factors of dryland ecological restoration.
Regarding the research tool itself, although the CiteSpace software used in this paper has been widely used in bibliometric research, there are still some problems, such as the failure to distinguish between the first author and the corresponding author of the document. The use of machine learning can realize interdisciplinary modelling of dryland ecological restoration, which will provide essential ideas for systematically solving complex social, environmental restoration problems [62,63]. Therefore, in the future, we will consider incorporating methods such as machine learning and extensive data mining into the research in dryland ecological restoration. Of course, the study was based on a bibliometric analysis of objective bibliographic data, and the results were stable and reliable and generally unaffected by empiricism. Therefore, the research conclusions of this paper have specific theoretical value and reference significance for grasping the research dynamics and progress in the field of dryland ecological restoration.

5. Conclusions

The study used the SCI-E and SSCI databases of the Web of Science Core Collection as the sample data source, and mapped the knowledge map of international dryland ecological restoration research with the help of CiteSpace visualization software. The basic characteristics of the literature, disciplinary crossover, major research countries, major scientific research institutions, major authors, literature co-citations, and research hotspots were systematically and informatively analyzed.
First, the basic characteristics of the literature: The number of publications in the field of dryland ecological restoration is increasing and has a strong potential for development. The journals Science, Nature, and Journal of Arid Environments lead the frontier of dryland ecological restoration research. Relevant research results are generally published in Science of the Total Environment, Environmental Science & Policy, and Climatic Change. The research on dryland ecological restoration involves more disciplines and is more cross-cutting. Two of the more involved disciplines are ecology and environmental science. The third, the country; China has the largest number of publications, but it is not outstanding in terms of both total citations and average citations. Fourth, scientific institutions; the top three research institutions in terms of number of publications are all in China, except for Beijing Normal University, which has more total citations, but the rest of China does not dominate in terms of total citations or average citations. Fernando T. Maestre (Spain) and Luca Salvati (Italy) have the highest number of publications and the greatest impact. The research on ecological restoration in drylands has initially formed five research teams with significant effects, mainly on drylands, land degradation, desertification, and ecological restoration. Sixth, the total citations of the literature; “Desertification” is a topic that has always been of concern to scholars. The most significant co-citation is the article “Unpacking the concept of land degradation neutrality and addressing its operation through the Rio Conventions” by Akhtar-Schuster M, a German scholar. Seventh, the research hotspots; scholars have focused on the dynamics of dryland restoration and the drivers of its evolution in terms of “how to manage” and “the impacts” and “conservation”. The main research directions are “biodiversity”, “climate change” and “desertification”. The keyword “conservation” appears with the highest intensity, indicating that humans are paying more attention to the conservation of existing resources.

Author Contributions

Conceptualization, X.S. and X.Z.; Data curation, X.S. and X.Z.; Formal analysis, X.S., X.Z., T.W., J.Z. and Y.L.; Funding acquisition, X.S.; Methodology, X.S.; Supervision, X.S. and J.D.; Writing—original draft, X.S. and X.Z.; Writing—review and editing, X.S., X.Z. and S.L. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Funding

This work was supported by the Scientific Research Funding Project of the Education Department of Liaoning Province, grant number WSNJC202035, the Fund for Postdoctoral Research of Shenyang Agricultural University, grant number 770218007, the introductory Talent Research Start Project of Shenyang Agricultural University, grant number 2016, the Horizontal project of Fudan University, grant number H2022040, the Horizontal project of Beijing Zhongji Huada Technology Development Co., Ltd., grant number H2022121, the Key Research and Development projects of the Hebei Province Study on the browning control method in the thermal processing of flexible pouch chestnut, grant number 20327113D, and the National Fund Cultivation Project, School of Economics and Management, Shenyang Agricultural University, grant number JGPY20170203.

Institutional Review Board Statement

No animal studies are presented in this manuscript. No human studies are presented in this manuscript. No potentially identifiable human images or data is presented in this study. The original contributions presented in the study are included in the article. Further inquiries can be directed to the corresponding author/s.

Informed Consent Statement

Not applicable.

Data Availability Statement

Publicly available datasets were analyzed in this study. This data can be found here: [http://webofknowledge.com, accessed on 14 June 2022].

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

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Figure 1. Statistics on the number of publications in the field of ecological restoration of international drylands from 2009 to 2021.
Figure 1. Statistics on the number of publications in the field of ecological restoration of international drylands from 2009 to 2021.
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Figure 2. Co-occurrence map of disciplines in the WOS database.
Figure 2. Co-occurrence map of disciplines in the WOS database.
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Figure 3. Collaborative network map of the nation in dryland ecological restoration research.
Figure 3. Collaborative network map of the nation in dryland ecological restoration research.
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Figure 4. Collaborative network map of scientific research institutions in dryland ecological restoration research.
Figure 4. Collaborative network map of scientific research institutions in dryland ecological restoration research.
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Figure 5. Collaborative network map of authors in dryland ecological restoration research.
Figure 5. Collaborative network map of authors in dryland ecological restoration research.
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Figure 6. Map of high-frequency co-cited literature in dryland ecological restoration research [49,50,51,52,53].
Figure 6. Map of high-frequency co-cited literature in dryland ecological restoration research [49,50,51,52,53].
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Figure 7. A visualization of the keyword co-occurring network in dryland ecological restoration research.
Figure 7. A visualization of the keyword co-occurring network in dryland ecological restoration research.
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Figure 8. Cluster map of key words in dryland ecological restoration research.
Figure 8. Cluster map of key words in dryland ecological restoration research.
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Figure 9. Emergence of keywords in dryland ecological restoration research (2009–2022).
Figure 9. Emergence of keywords in dryland ecological restoration research (2009–2022).
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Table
Table 1. Mainly co-cited journals.
Table 1. Mainly co-cited journals.
A Total of Cited JournalsCitations/Times A Total of Cited JournalsIntermediary CentralityCitations/Times
Science971Science of The Total Environment0.056897
Nature682Environmental Science & Policy0.054527
Journal of Arid Environments634Climatic Change0.055627
Restoration Ecology620SCIENCE0.0426,194
Proceedings of The National Academy of Sciences of The United States of America608Land Use Policy0.046386
Land Degradation & Development589Landscape Ecology0.045717
Science of The Total Environment530Applied Geography0.043705
Journal of Applied Ecology488Soil & Tillage Research0.043951
Ecological Applications482New Phytologist0.043532
ECOLOGY464World Development0.042389
Table
Table 2. The top 10 countries in dryland ecological restoration research.
Table 2. The top 10 countries in dryland ecological restoration research.
CountriesNumber of Published Papers/ArticleTotal Citations/Time Average Citations/Time
China58312,55421.53
America51715,33629.66
Australia208752536.18
Germany181491027.13
Spain180707939.33
United Kingdom169594935.20
Italy123322726.24
France123292923.81
Brazil109324329.75
Canada87390644.90
Table
Table 3. The top 10 dryland research institutes in terms of ecological restoration.
Table 3. The top 10 dryland research institutes in terms of ecological restoration.
Scientific Research InstitutionsCountriesNumber of Published Papers/ArticleTotal Cited Quantity/TimeAverage Cited Quantity/Time
Chinese academic of scienceChina217507423.38
Univ Chinese Acad SciChina89148716.71
Beijing Normal UnivChina73198827.23
Univ Western AustraliaAustralia39114329.31
Univ LeedsUnited Kingdom38126033.16
US Geol SurveyUnited States3793525.27
Univ Rey Juan CarlosSpain37279975.65
Northwest A&F UnivChina3783722.62
CSICSpain36172647.94
Beijing Forestry UnivChina3153917.39
Table
Table 4. The top 10 authors in dryland ecological restoration research.
Table 4. The top 10 authors in dryland ecological restoration research.
AuthorNumber of Published Papers/ArticleAuthor’s InstitutionCountries
Fernando T. Maestre39Universidad Rey Juan CarlosSpain
Luca Salvati35Agricultural Research Council—Research Centre for Plant-Soil SystemItaly
James Aronson21Centre d’Ecologie Fonctionnelle et EvolutiveFrance
Manuel Delgado-Baquerizo15Hawkesbury Institute for the EnvironmentAustralia
David J. Eldridge12Centre for Ecosystem Science, School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of New South WalesAustralia
Lindsay C. Stringer11Sustainability Research Institute, School of Earth and Environment, University of Leeds,UK
Rasmus Fensholt11Department of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management, University of CopenhagenDenmark
BOJIE FU11State Key Laboratory of Urban and Region Ecology, Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Science, University of Chinese Academy of Science, Joint Center for Global Change StudiesChina
Santiago Soliveres11Área de Biodiversidad y Conservación, Departamento de Biología y Geología, Física y Química Inorgánica y Analítica, Universidad Rey Juan CarlosSpain
Martin Brandt9Department of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, DenmarkDenmark
Table
Table 5. High-frequency co-cited literature in dryland ecological restoration research.
Table 5. High-frequency co-cited literature in dryland ecological restoration research.
Total Number of CitationsCentralityYearCountriesLiterature Title
340.162017GermanyUnpacking the Concept of Land Degradation Neutrality and Addressing Its Operation through the Rio Conventions
180.152007AmericaGlobal Desertification: Building a Science for Dryland Development
110.152012DenmarkGreenness in Semi-Arid Areas across the Globe 1981–2007—an Earth Observing Satellite Based Analysis of Trends and Drivers
200.122014United KingdomAssessing Land Degradation and Desertification Using Vegetation Index Data: Current Frameworks and Future Directions
490.112016Romania Drylands Extent and Environmental Issues. A Global Approach
Table
Table 6. Details the top 10 clusters of dryland ecological restoration research.
Table 6. Details the top 10 clusters of dryland ecological restoration research.
Serial Number Cluster NameAverage Profile Value Keywords
#0detecting land degradation0.907detecting land degradation; land degradation assessment; human-induced land degradation; NDVI3G soil moisture; using residual trend analysis
#1urban area0.917urban area; spatial relationship; northern shaanxi china; scale mismatches; estuary watershed restoration
#2ecological outcome0.892ecological outcome; biodiversity persistence; human-modified tropical landscape; abiotic factor; vascular plant
#3waste rock tip0.928waste rock tip; organic carbon dynamics; paddy field; northeast china; century model
#4physical modeling0.862physical modeling; freshwater lens formation; wasa-sed model; hyporheic restoration; restoring ecological service
#5driving force0.944driving force; spatial assessment; methane microseepage; ch4 sink; potential land degradation
#6erosion-induced land degradation0.826erosion-induced land degradation; acacia salignas soil legacy; plant species-area relationship; evenness cover; faxinal system
#7social-ecological systems approach0.832social-ecological systems approach; socioeconomic processes-chinas experience; puget sound usa; estuary restoration; landscape level
#8sustainable livelihood development0.913sustainable livelihood development; wild food plant; toxoplasma gondii; navigating challenge; using spartina alternfliora
#9combating soil loss0.845combating soil loss; sustainable soil-water relationship; non-linear boundary; re-orienting ecological restoration; interdisciplinary historical vegetation mapping
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Shi, X.; Zhang, X.; Lu, S.; Wang, T.; Zhang, J.; Liang, Y.; Deng, J. Dryland Ecological Restoration Research Dynamics: A Bibliometric Analysis Based on Web of Science Data. Sustainability 2022, 14, 9843. https://doi.org/10.3390/su14169843

AMA Style

Shi X, Zhang X, Lu S, Wang T, Zhang J, Liang Y, Deng J. Dryland Ecological Restoration Research Dynamics: A Bibliometric Analysis Based on Web of Science Data. Sustainability. 2022; 14(16):9843. https://doi.org/10.3390/su14169843

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Shi, Xiaoliang, Xinyue Zhang, Shuaiyu Lu, Tielong Wang, Jiayi Zhang, Yuanpeng Liang, and Jifeng Deng. 2022. "Dryland Ecological Restoration Research Dynamics: A Bibliometric Analysis Based on Web of Science Data" Sustainability 14, no. 16: 9843. https://doi.org/10.3390/su14169843

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