Progress of Mine Land Reclamation and Ecological Restoration Research Based on Bibliometric Analysis

Abstract

The mining of mineral resources has caused serious damage to land and significant pressure on ecological environment. During the repairing of damaged land and degraded ecosystems, there have been many pieces of literature related to land reclamation and ecological restoration (LRER) that have emerged. To understand the progress and prospect of LRER research, it is necessary to sort out such pieces of literature, analyze the current research status, and forecast the future research directions. Here, Bibliometrix R-package was used to analyze 2357 articles, which were derived from the core database of Web of Science, to explore the development of LRER from 1990 to 2022. The results are as follows. (1) The annual scientific output results show that both the number of articles published on LRER and the number of articles annually citied were increasing gradually from 1990 to 2022. (2) High-frequency keyword analysis indicates that heavy metal (Cd, Pb) pollution remediation is a research hotspot. The cluster analysis (CA) and multiple correspondence analysis (MCA) show that there are two clusters in the current research of LRER, in which one surrounds heavy metal pollution and the other focuses on ecological restoration of mining areas. The two clusters correspond to the remediation and ecological restoration (rehabilitation) stages of stepwise ecological restoration, respectively. Thematic evolution analysis shows that, for more than 30 years, mine drainage and heavy metal pollution treatment, soil reconstruction (soil profile reconstruction, soil improvement), and vegetation restoration have been the focus of research. (3) Future research should focus on the relationship between mine ecological restoration and carbon sequestration and the relationship between ecological restoration and biodiversity in mine areas. In addition, LRER technology exchange, international cooperation, and industrialization are also main directions of development. Generally, in this study, metrology software (Bibliometrix R-package 3.1.4) from the literature was used to sort out the relevant literature on LRER over the past 30 years so as to provide reference for future research on LRER.