International Development Trends in the Field of Agricultural Resources and the Environment

Abstract

The development trends and research layout of agricultural resources and the environment (ARE) are the focus of global attention. In this study, we compiled a data set of SCI papers published in the ARE field since the 13th Five-Year Plan. Thereafter, the topic extraction model of Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) was used to mine the text content so as to explore the research layout of global ARE. The results show that, between 2016 and the time of this study, 31,559 articles were published in the ARE field, exhibiting an overall upward trend. During this time, China and the United States were the main forces in paper publishing. The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Northwest Agriculture and Forestry University, and the US Department of Agriculture were the top three publishing institutions. Research institutes in China, the United States, Russia, Sweden, the Netherlands, Brazil, and Australia cooperated closely, and the CAS was at the center of the cooperation network. The clustering results of text topics based on the LDA model show that three topics—namely, the interaction mechanisms of plants, the rhizosphere, and microorganisms; the mechanisms and predictive evaluation of soil landslides or erosion; and the decomposition and interaction response of organic matter in agroforestry ecosystems—have been the hot research areas in this field since 2016. The management and efficient utilization of farmland nutrients, and the technology and mechanisms of agricultural waste resource utilization have become key research directions since 2019. The research layouts of China and the United States in this field were analyzed, and the similarities and differences were compared. In addition, suggestions for the future development of ARE are proposed. This study is of great significance for the overall development trend of ARE, the timely tracking of scientific research hotspots, outlining key research and development directions, and promoting scientific and technological innovation.