Peatland restoration research: a global overview with insights from Indonesia

Abstract

Background: Repeated and severe fires have led to a large investment in research directed towards recapturing the natural values of Indonesia's peatland forest resources. The aim of this study was to identify the patterns and trends in research on peatland restoration-related literature available on the Scopus database. Methods in this paper a bibliometric methodology, the Scopus database and VOSviewer were used explore the trends in the published peatland restoration literature in the period 1994-2021; the leading journals and most influential authors, affiliations, countries, documents and research themes were identified. Results: Three hundred and seventeen documents including 266 journal articles were identified. The leading journals based on numbers of articles published and citations were Restoration Ecology and Ecological Engineering. Authors affiliated to institutions in Canada and the United Kingdom were the most influential. Indonesia was the third most influential based on numbers of documents. The most influential article was "The underappreciated potential of peatlands in global climate change mitigation strategies" by Liefield J in Nature Communications with an annual average citation rate of 66/year. A keyword co-occurrence network identified nine main themes in peat restoration research. Conclusions:The findings of the study are used to outline the types of research in peat restoration now required to meet the outstanding and unmet challenges confronted in Indonesia. Three significant challenges have been identified: (1) anthropogenic, those that encompass issues related to community acceptance and participation in peatland restoration, (2) ecological, those associated with severely degraded peatlands, and (3) economic, the absence of secure funding to cover substantial costs.