Research on hotspots and evolutionary trends of blue carbon sinks: a bibliometric analysis based on CiteSpace

Global climate change has become the primary environmental issue in the international community. Blue carbon is an effective way to build a community of destiny for the oceans and achieve carbon neutrality. And it has become a frontier area of global climate governance, which has received extensive attention from the academic circle. Based on analyzing the origin and conceptual connotation of blue carbon research, the article organized 4530 related papers from 1990 to 2023 based on the Web of Science Core Collection database. Adopting the bibliometric method with CiteSpace 6.1.R3, the paper analyzed the main characteristics of the blue carbon research literature in terms of temporal distribution, spatial distribution, journals, institutions, and authors. Then, through mapping the keywords under the high-citation articles, the alluvial map of research hotspots, the keywords co-occurrence, the keywords emergence, and the keywords clustering, the article explored the research hotspots and thematic evolution trends of blue carbon. There were four results: Firstly, there is an overall increasing trend in the number of blue carbon research publications over time. Secondly, the spatial distribution of blue carbon shows a multipolar development trend. Thirdly, blue carbon research has mainly experienced four periods. Fourthly, the research hotspots have evolved from a single ecosystem type to multiple ecosystem types and from conceptual understanding research to systems theory research. Based on the results, the study makes some policy recommendations. It is necessary to strengthen the basic research and innovation on blue carbon, to accelerate the research and development of cutting-edge technologies for blue carbon sequestration and sink enhancement, to improve the theoretical and practical research on the protection and restoration of blue carbon ecosystems, and to carry out international exchanges and cooperation on blue carbon in various fields. The purpose of this paper is to summarize the research status of blue carbon, promote a more scientific and rational development of the research field, and provide a reference for follow-up scholars to carry out related research.