Remote Sensing Applications in Monitoring of Protected Areas: A Bibliometric Analysis

Peili Duan,Peng Yin,Yeqiao Wang

doi:10.3390/rs12050772

Abstract

The development of remote sensing platforms and sensors and improvement in science and technology provide crucial support for the monitoring and management of protected areas. This paper presents an analysis of research publications, from a bibliometric perspective, on the remote sensing of protected areas. This analysis is focused on the period from 1991 to 2018. For data, a total of 4546 academic publications were retrieved from the Web of Science database. The VOSviewer software was adopted to evaluate the co-authorships among countries and institutions, as well as the co-occurrences of author keywords. The results indicate an increasing trend of annual publications in the remote sensing of protected areas. This analysis reveals the major topical subjects, leading countries, and most influential institutions around the world that have conducted relevant research in scientific publications; this study also reveals the journals that include the most publications, and the collaborative patterns related to the remote sensing of protected areas. Landsat, MODIS, and LiDAR are among the most commonly used satellites and sensors. Research topics related to protected area monitoring are mainly concentrated on change detection, biodiversity conservation, and climate change impact. This analysis can help researchers and scholars better understand the intellectual structure of the field and identify the future research directions.

Highlights

In accordance with the International Union for Conversation of Nature (IUCN) [1,2], a protected area (PA) is defined as “a clearly defined geographical space, recognized, dedicated, and managed, through legal or other effective means, to achieve the long-term conservation of nature with associated ecosystem services and cultural values”
PAs are considered to be areas of land or sea, including national parks, national forests, natural reserves, conservation areas, wilderness areas, marine protected areas (MPAs), and wildlife refuges and sanctuaries, that are designated for the conservation of native biological diversity and natural and cultural heritage and significance [3]
The research domain covered a wide variety of themes and disciplines

Summary

Introduction

In accordance with the International Union for Conversation of Nature (IUCN) [1,2], a protected area (PA) is defined as “a clearly defined geographical space, recognized, dedicated, and managed, through legal or other effective means, to achieve the long-term conservation of nature with associated ecosystem services and cultural values”. PAs are considered to be areas of land or sea, including national parks, national forests, natural reserves, conservation areas, wilderness areas, marine protected areas (MPAs), and wildlife refuges and sanctuaries, that are designated for the conservation of native biological diversity and natural and cultural heritage and significance [3]. The amount and coverage of both terrestrial and marine PAs have markedly increased [4]. As reported by the World Database on Protected Areas [5], as of July 2018, there were 238,563 designated PAs, covering about 14.9% and 7.3% of the Earth’s land and ocean surface areas, respectively. PAs are central to nature conservation efforts with key environmental, social, cultural and economic functions throughout the world [3,6]. PAs play an important role in biodiversity conservation and ecosystem integrity [7,8,9,10]

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion