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Arid Land Geography ›› 2026, Vol. 49 ›› Issue (5): 928-938.doi: 10.12118/j.issn.1000-6060.2025.327

• Ecology and Environment • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Research trend of the ecological environment in the Yellow River Basin based on bibliometrics

LI Wenmei(), WU Xinnian(), REN Heng, LI Na, ZHANG Jing   

  1. Key Laboratory of Ecological Safety and Sustainable Development in Arid Lands, Northwest Institute of Eco-Environment and Resources, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lanzhou 730000, Gansu, China
  • Received:2025-06-05 Revised:2025-07-30 Online:2026-05-25 Published:2026-05-25
  • Contact: WU Xinnian E-mail:liwm@llas.ac.cn;wuxn@lzb.ac.cn

Abstract:

Uncovering the structural patterns of evolution in hotspot research themes in a given field can deliver significant theoretical and practical value in terms of trajectories of disciplinary development and the optimization of scientific research planning. This investigation, taking eco-environmental research in the Yellow River Basin of China as a case study, analyzed hotspots in eco-environmental issues in the Yellow River Basin. It employed keyword analysis and social network analysis to investigate the literature from the China National Knowledge Infrastructure core journals and the Web of Science database (data from 2015 to 2024). The results of this study indicate the following points: (1) The research system was dominated by the Yellow River Basin theme, which, together with the policy-driven themes of eco-environment and sustainable development, constitutes the core domain, while investigation of emerging technology applications remains nascent. (2) This body of research exhibits significant spatial heterogeneity, forming three distinct regional research clusters: vegetation-soil restoration on the Loess Plateau, wetland-landscape, and integrated vegetation-climate-human activity governance across the entirety of the basin. (3) The literature in Chinese is primarily focused on water conservancy engineering (54.3%) and agroecology (32.1%). In contrast, the English literature demonstrates the absolute dominance of environmental science (in 1800 papers) and a deep coupling with sustainable technology and water resource research. Future studies should focus on the construction of a multi-dimensional natural-economic-social coupled analytical framework to provide systematic decision-making support for ecological conservation and high-quality development in the Yellow River Basin. In addition, emerging technologies should be more embedded into policy evaluation processes to dynamically optimize ecological compensation standards and industrial access mechanisms. We also recommend that interdisciplinary and cross-regional comparative research and data integration be strengthened to explore governance pathways that are tailored to the characteristics of the Yellow River Basin.

Key words: social network, situation analysis, knowledge mapping, co-word analysis, Yellow River Basin