Investigating avenues of wetland research via bibliometric analysis

Wetlands are among the most valuable and fragile habitats. They are vanishing three times faster than forests, persuading agencies and authorities to bring a lot of effort and budget into management, restoration, and wiser exploitation of wetlands. As the connection node of several fields of study, wetlands are under the focus of researchers from various backgrounds. To optimize their findings for successful follow-up afterwards, at the first step, a detailed and comprehensive view of research on the history and present progress of various topics within a research area is required. This paper aims to investigate and discuss various aspects of wetland studies using the potent tool of bibliometric analysis, coupled with a visualized review of the different trends within the topic. According to the results, ۱۰۸۳ highly-cited papers were published by ۱۶۰ journals, from which Ecological Engineering, Water Research, and Environmental Science and Technology are the three most productive ones. Also, wetland-related articles were authored by ۳۸۱۵ writers, while Joseph Maria Bayona, William J. Mitsch, and Hans Brix were ranked as the three most productive wetland researchers. VOSviewer software was utilized for visualization. The co-occurrence network of author keywords consisted of five major clusters, including climate change, wetland management and restoration, constructed wetlands (wastewater treatment practices), wetland mapping (remote sensing and GIS), and studies related to wetland’s plant life and sediment, respectively. Investigating occurrence patterns of papers over the intended period implies that none of the wetland-related topics are obsolete, indicating any kind of wetland research initiative will be welcomed by the scientific community in an unforeseen future.