Abstract
Based on the bibliometric and data visualization analysis software Citespace, this study carried out document statistics and information mining on the Web of Science database and characterized the distributed hydrological model knowledge system from 1986 to 2019. The results show a few things: (1) from 1986 to 2019, the United States and China accounted for 41% of the total amount of publications, and they were the main force in the field of distributed hydrological model research; (2) field research involves multiple disciplines, mainly covering water resources, geology, earth sciences, environmental sciences, ecology and engineering; (3) the frontier of field research has shifted from using distributed hydrological models in order to simulate runoff and nonpoint source environmental responses to the coupling of technologies and products that can obtain high-precision, high-resolution data with distributed hydrological models. (4) Affected by climate warming, the melting of glaciers has accelerated, and the spatial distribution of permafrost and water resources have changed, which has caused a non-negligible impact on the hydrological process. Therefore, the development of distributed hydrological models suitable for alpine regions and the response of hydrological processes to climate change have also become important research directions at present.
Highlights
Water resources are important natural resources that maintain ecological balance and promote the economic development of modern society
Around the 1990s, a number of distributed hydrological models emerged in the context of the promotion of research needs such as the sustainable use of water resources, nonpoint source pollution, the impact of global changes on the hydrological cycle and the rapid development of computer technology [24]
From 1986 to 2019, a total of 3079 documents related to the field of distributed hydrological modeling were published, and a total of 226 documents were published from January to October 2020
Summary
Water resources are important natural resources that maintain ecological balance and promote the economic development of modern society. In the past two decades, the emergence of problems such as population expansion, water shortage, environmental pollution and climate change [1,2,3] have made rational planning of water-resource allocation and sustainable use of water resources become a top priority. The development and application of distributed hydrological models has become a hot spot in the field of hydrological research. The distributed hydrological model is an important tool for understanding the hydrological cycle and planning the sustainable use of water resources to meet various needs [4]. Distributed hydrological models are widely used to the major scientific issues like the hydrological response under climate change [5,6], nonpoint source pollution [7], integrated water resources management [8], hydrological response to land use/cover change [9], etc. It can be seen that the research field of distributed hydrological model research is multifaceted
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