Grassland Ecosystem Progress: A Review and Bibliometric Analysis Based on Research Publication over the Last Three Decades

Abstract

Understanding the grassland ecosystem is crucial for improving grassland ecosystem functions and services such as climate regulation, water and soil conservation, carbon sequestration, and biodiversity and gene pool maintenance. However, a systematic and comprehensive review of the relevant literature is still unclear and lacking. The VOSviewer software and cluster analysis were used to visually analyze and perform dimension reduction classification on the 27,778 studies related to grassland ecosystem research based on the Web of Science database. The number of publications targeting grassland ecosystem increased rapidly from 2006 to 2021. Ecology, agronomy, and environmental science were the most popular research categories, and the top journal sources were Remote Sensing, Journal of Ecology, and Ecology and Evolution. The leading publishing countries were the United States, China, and Germany. The top three institutions were the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Colorado State University. Cooperation between different countries and institutions had increased. Keyword co-occurrence network analysis showed that Biodiversity, Vegetation and Conservation were the most popular study areas, grassland management, climate change, land use pattern, and ecosystem impact were the hot research topics. All studies could be divided into three categories by cluster analysis: grassland ecological characteristics including basic physicochemical properties, vegetation community characteristics, aboveground and belowground biomass, and soil structural quality of grassland; driving mechanisms that demonstrated effects of human activities and climate change on grassland ecosystem function; and grassland ecosystem services that focused the influences of different grassland management strategies on ecological services, animal welfare and human well-being. The three topic categories of reviewed studies were interrelated and consistent with each other, and the performances were progressive. This paper reviewed the trend evolution through keyword hotspots and analyzed the future research directions to provide an important reference for scientists to better respond to the balance of herbage and sustainable utilization of grassland and maintenance of ecological security.

Research progress of remote sensing in the field of ecological services: bibliometric analysis based on CiteSpace

“…The inclusion of these keywords highlights that global climate change and biodiversity conservation have become integral aspects of remote sensing research within the field of ecological services. Remote sensing research now serves as a catalyst for addressing the challenges posed by global climate change and advancing biodiversity conservation efforts [22,23] .…”

Effects of Short-Term Nitrogen Additions on Biomass and Soil Phytochemical Cycling in Alpine Grasslands of Tianshan, China

“…Grassland is one of the most important and widely distributed ecosystem types in terrestrial ecosystems [1,2], and they play an important role in the global carbon and nitrogen cycle, climate regulation, and in coping with global changes [3,4]. Grasslands in China cover an area of about 4.0 × 10 8 hm 2 , accounting for about 41.7% of the total land area [5].…”

“…In this study, we investigated the effects of increased nitrogen deposition on the physicochemical soil properties (soil water content, pH, soil salt content, total organic carbon, total nitrogen, and total phosphorus) and plant nutrient contents (total organic carbon, total nitrogen, and total phosphorus) of Bayanbulak alpine grassland through nitrogen addition experiments with different levels and frequencies, in order to provide a scientific foundation for the adaptive management of ecosystems against the background of increasing atmospheric nitrogen deposition. Additionally, our research aimed to address the following scientific inquiries: (1) Is there variability in the responses of grassland community biomass to different patterns of nitrogen addition? Is the frequency of nitrogen addition also an important factor causing changes in the plant community structure?…”

Ten deep learning techniques to address small data problems with remote sensing

“…Together, these diverse RS platforms contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of the Earth's surface across different scales and domains (Spoto et al, 2012). For this reason, these RS products are widely used to study local and regional environmental problems, including agricultural productivity (Sawada et al, 2020;Taiwo et al, 2023), the water quality of lakes and ponds (Bhateria and Jain, 2016), the ecological patterns of forests and grasslands (Zhu et al, 2023), and damage to natural, cultivated, and inhabited land through extreme weather events. Since the spatial and temporal resolution of RS products is likely to continue increasing, DL applications are expected to become even more popular for solving fine-scale local issues where each local site has its own unique conditions and context (T. Kattenborn et al, 2021;L.…”