基于文献计量的长江流域水生态健康评价研究进展

[Objective] This study aims to analyze research literature in the field of water ecological health assessment in the Yangtze River Basin using bibliometric software, systematically summarize development trends, frontier hotspots, knowledge clusters, and evolutionary pathways of research in recent years, and review research progress and main contents, thereby providing reference for the future research and protection of water ecological environment in the Yangtze River Basin of China. [Methods] Bibliometrics and knowledge graph methods are adopted. Using VOSviewer and CiteSpace software, this study systematically analyzes the research literature related to water ecological health assessment in the Yangtze River Basin from 2000 to 2024 in the Web of Science Core Collection (WoSCC) database (561 papers) and China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) database (364 papers), and identifies the clustering of research hotspots and the evolution patterns of burst keywords. [Results] The results show that: (1) the research development exhibits three-stage characteristics. In the early stage, the annual average number of publications was less than 10. In the middle stage, the annual number of publications gradually increased driven by policies. After 2017, the annual number of publications increased rapidly, showing a significant coupling relationship with the implementation of ecological protection policies in the Yangtze River Basin. (2) WoSCC research focuses on the pollution-driven ecological risk assessment mechanisms, while CNKI research emphasizes innovation in assessment methods and the diagnosis of biological integrity thresholds. The former mainly addresses micro-level mechanisms, while the latter focuses on macro-level management. (3) In the new era, research priorities have shifted toward multidimensional comprehensive assessment of water ecosystems, supporting precise health assessment of the river basin and facilitating the fundamental shift of the “14th Five-Year Plan” river and lake management objectives toward “water ecosystem health evaluation”. [Conclusion] Future research should focus on deepening interdisciplinary integration, further strengthening the capacity building of water ecological monitoring, promoting the deep integration of intelligent monitoring technology and multi-interface coupling models, developing comprehensive evaluation indicators of multi-group biological indicators, improving the monitoring indicators and standard system for water ecological health assessment, and providing scientific support for the protection and research of water ecological health in the Yangtze River Basin.