Global progress in climate change and biodiversity conservation research

Abstract

Climate change is always an immense challenge for conservation biologists in the development and implementation of effective conservation strategies. The expected loss of biodiversity due to climate change weakens the delivery of ecosystem functioning and services, which can lead to a global environmental crisis. This study aims to conduct a comprehensive review of literature on recent progress in climate change and biodiversity conservation research and identifies the leading countries, institutions and researchers in this research area. We also aim to explore the current research trends, and existing scientific knowledge as well as to provide perspectives on the topic. A scientometric analysis approach included co-occurrence analysis of countries, institutions, and authors for research productivity and academic development; co-occurrence of keywords for identification of research hotspots; co-citation analysis for prominent articles and journals; and keyword burst for detection of global research trends, was applied by using CiteSpace based on 1965 articles retrieved from the Web of Science Core Collection for the period 2000–2021. We found an increasing research production over time on climate change and biodiversity conservation research. Although climate change and biodiversity conservation research have been studied across the globe (particularly in developed countries such as the USA) and institutions (such as the University of Queensland, Australia), several more countries, regions and institutions are underrepresented across the globe. The current research hot topics we found are mainly “management”, “impact”, “diversity” and “land use”, whereas the research trends are “richness”, “scenario”, “perception” and “REDD”. Thus, further research is needed to cover the huge knowledge gap related to humans, climate change, biodiversity, and ecosystem functioning across the globe (particularly in unexplored countries and regions) through several interdisciplinary approaches and collaborations.