Determination of Phycocyanin from Space—A Bibliometric Analysis

Abstract

Over the past few decades, there has been an increase in the number of studies about the estimation of phycocyanin derived from remote sensing techniques. Since phycocyanin is a unique pigment of inland water cyanobacteria, the quantification of its concentration from earth observation data is important for water quality monitoring - once some species can produce toxins. Because of the growth of this field in the past decade, several reviews and studies comparing algorithms have been published. Thus, instead of focusing on algorithms comparison or description, the goal of the present study is to systematically analyze and visualize the evolution of publications. Using the Web of Science database this study analyzed the existing publications on remote sensing of phycocyanin decade-by-decade for the period 1991–2020. The bibliometric analysis showed how research topics evolved from measuring pigments to the quantification of optical properties and from laboratory experiments to measuring entire temperate and tropical aquatic systems. This study provides the status quo and development trend of the field and points out what could be the direction for future research.