Knowledge map of Yellow River Basin’s water resources based on literature analysis

Abstract

The Yellow River Basin (YRB) is an important economic zone in China. The issue of water ecology has attached widely attention by scholars and society. This paper systematically reviewed the status, hotspots and development tendency on water resources research in the YRB based on the China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) database from 1992 to 2019. The SATI4.0 was used to analyze the annual publication, journal sources and keywords. High-frequency keywords were extracted, and software including NetDraw, SPSS and CiteSpace were used to analyze the co-occurring keywords, clustering and research frontier. Results showed that: (1) The number of published papers had increased before 2005 and decreased after it. The quantity of paper has increased sharply since 2018, indicating that the research has a new direction. (2) The source of journals mainly concentrated on basic subjects and hydraulic engineering. (3) The cluster analysis shows that hydrologic features, water management and protection and the water rights system are hotspots. (4) The result of research frontier indicates that sensitivity, ecological protection and high-quality development of water resources have ample research perspectives. It is general trend to combine the scientific methods with traditional methods. The results are conducive to systematically understand research advances and trends of water resources under changing environment, thereby promoting the construction of ecological civilization in the YRB.