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Development of global soil erosion research at the watershed scale: a bibliometric analysis of the past decade

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Abstract

At the watershed scale, soil erosion is a cascading system that includes detachment–transport–deposition processes while sediment yield is the net balance of detachment and deposition at the watershed outlet. Due to the temporal-spatial variations of rainfall and landscapes, the relationships between soil erosion and sediment yield are complex and non-linear. Soil erosion processes and sediment yield at the watershed scale have attracted widespread attention; however, few systematic studies have been performed. In this study, a bibliometric analysis and visualization are used to understand the global research status of soil erosion and sediment yield at the watershed scale and provide a reference for researchers to establish future research directions. The USA and China were the most active contributors and had the most publications and active institutions, while Jean Poesen, D.E. Walling, and Xingmin Mu were the top three lead authors in this field. A keyword evolution analysis showed that determining the relationship between soil erosion and the watershed landscape and identifying the sediment source and off-site environmental and ecological effects caused by soil erosion have attracted considerable research attention. Additionally, significant progress has been made in the study of “connectivity,” and future research should integrate connectivity and soil erosion models to explain the soil erosion, sediment transport, and deposition processes at the watershed scale.

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Data availability

The datasets used or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Funding

Financial support for this research was provided by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (42007053) and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (2019B07214).

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  1. College of Agricultural Science and Engineering, Hohai University, Nanjing, 210098, China

    Xuan Huang, Kai-Rui Wang, Yu-wen Zou & Xin-Chun Cao

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  1. Xuan Huang
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Contributions

Xuan Huang and Xin-Chun Cao contributed to the conception of the study; Xuan Huang and Yu-Wen Zou contributed significantly to the analysis and manuscript preparation; Xuan Huang and Kai-Rui Wang performed the data analyses and wrote the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Xin-Chun Cao.

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Huang, X., Wang, KR., Zou, Yw. et al. Development of global soil erosion research at the watershed scale: a bibliometric analysis of the past decade. Environ Sci Pollut Res 28, 12232–12244 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-020-11888-5

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