Bibliometric analysis of carbon sequestration in tropical agroforestry systems: trends and perspectives

Introduction. The conversion of tropical forests to agricultural and pastoral land has reduced soil carbon stocks by 12 to 30% and removed more than 200 Mg C per hectare of aboveground biomass, which reinforces interest in agroforestry systems that can sequester carbon and restore degraded soils. Objetives: This study aimed to describe and quantitatively analyse the evolution of research on carbon sequestration in tropical agroforestry systems, identifying temporal, geographical and thematic patterns to inform mitigation policies. Materials and Methods. A bibliometric mapping of the Scopus database was conducted using a specific search string, with no language or time restrictions, retrieving 788 documents published between 1992 and 2026 in 283 sources, which were analysed with Bibliometrix and VOSviewer. Results. The results show an annual growth rate of 4.16%, a mean article age of 7.25 years, 3,121 authors with an average of 5.36 co-authors per article and 43.78% international co-authorship, 5,580 references and 2,092 author keywords, a core of nine leading journals that concentrate 27% of publications, ten institutions responsible for 81.9% of the corpus and three countries that together contribute more than half of all documents, as well as thematic clusters centred on agroforestry, soil carbon, ecosystem services and land use. Conclusions. The field is now well established and provides an empirical basis for ecosystem-based mitigation, restoration of degraded tropical landscapes and low carbon rural development, although important gaps remain regarding costs, equity, gender, indigenous peoples and rural wellbeing that future research agendas need to address.