A bibliometric analysis of grassland degradation research based on Web of Science

To understand the research progress of the global grassland degradation and provide a reference for research in related fields, this study presented a quantitative analysis on grassland degradation research from 1992 to 2011 based on the Web of Science data source, by using bibliometric tools such as the database analysis tools and Excel. The results showed that in the past 20 years, the annual number of articles on international grassland degradation research appeared an exponential growth. Research on grassland degradation has increased significantly since 2006 in China, which was at a similar level of growth with the world. The number and citation frequencies of published articles in China were ranked in the second position in the world, but the overall level quality of articles was lower than the United States and other developed countries. The Institute of Chinese Academy of Sciences leads domestic position and worthy of peer attention in this fields. Three journals with the highest quality are Journal of Arid Environments, Global Change Biology and Geoderma. The research hotspots of grassland degradation research are vegetation biomass, physical and chemical properties of grassland soil, the change of spatial pattern, restoration, protection of degraded grassland, an so on.