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The rapid urbanization process means that even moderate-sized cities can quickly become part of larger urban agglomerations, creating new urban zones. Urban Green Infrastructure (UGI) plays a crucial role in these clusters, acting as precious green spaces essential for maintaining ecological safety. This study combines fluctuation analysis based on Morphological Spatial Pattern with traditional landscape pattern analysis, comprehensively addressing the evolution of UGI in terms of quantity, characteristics, and morphology. We selected the Taiyuan-Jinzhong agglomeration as our study area, which is currently in an agglomeration process. The results demonstrated the critical role of surrounding mountains as natural ecological barrier zones. During urban agglomeration, management strategies focused on large-scale afforestation to ensure the quantity of UGI. However, this approach also led to a more clustered landscape with reduced connectivity. Additionally, linear or small-scale UGI types such as branch and islet have seen reductions over the past decade. Changes in internal morphological and complex fluctuations within UGI can harm the formation of ecological networks and potentially negatively affect biodiversity and ecological safety. The research highlights how ecological protection and urban planning policies can influence UGI fluctuations. Therefore, urban managers should not just concentrate on maintaining the quantity of UGI, but also give consideration to changes in its internal features and morphology. Before cities further agglomerate into larger urban clusters, it is crucial to address deficiencies in UGI, continuously improving type configurations and functional structures at the landscape scale. Through strategic planning of UGI, cities can mitigate ecological risks and foster sustainable urban development. Full article

The study aimed to gain a comprehensive picture of current e-learning development in higher education. In order to do this, research questions including distribution patterns, contributors in terms of journals, authors and countries, as well as theme development and evolution pattens of e-learning were proposed. To address the research questions, a bibliometric analysis was carried out by reviewing 877 peer-reviewed journal publications published from 2019 to 2021 in the Scopus database, with the help of Biblioshiny and VOSviewer software. The results indicated a fast annual growth in the number of publications from 2019 to 2021, with social science as the core subject area for e-learning development. Sustainability (Switzerland) and Education and Information Technologies were the most contributing journals, due to their high citation numbers and productivity. China, Malaysia, and Saudi Arabia made the highest contributions to the e-learning field in terms of the publication numbers and citation indicators. “Acceptance factors”, “perceptions”, “mental health”, “teachers”, “university students”, and “e-learning management and organization” were interest topics discussed between 2019 and 2021. More empirical research was featured to address the issues of e-learning in 2019, and the research interests focused on motivation, administration, and pedagogical aspects. Meanwhile, from 2020–2021, it was observed that themes such as machine learning, artificial intelligence, and information and communication technology in the e-learning field were booming. The study provided extensive insight into the existing publications of the e-learning landscape; accordingly, the results could be useful to researchers, policymakers, and practitioners in this field. Full article