SYSTEMATIC REVIEW article
Front. For. Glob. Change
Sec. Forests and the Atmosphere
Volume 8 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/ffgc.2025.1487503
Climate change and forestry carbon sink: a literature review and visualization perspective
Provisionally accepted
- Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou, China
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Employing scientometric analysis of 8,346 peer-reviewed publications indexed in the Web of Science Core Collection (1981-2023) on climate change and forestry carbon sink, systematically elucidated fundamental dimensions encompassing developmental trajectories, disciplinary characteristics, and intellectual frameworks. The results of this study indicate the following: (1) The number of publications focusing on climate change and forestry carbon sink is exhibiting exponential growth, signifying a "Rapid development period" in this field. Forest Ecology and Management constitutes the predominant knowledge dissemination platform, while Environmental Sciences stands out as the most popular subject category. (2) The United States, China, and Canada are the most productive countries in terms of research output in this field. Additionally, the Chinese Academy of Sciences serves as a pivotal institutional entity in epistemological production conducting research in this area. (3) The seminal work, titled "A large and persistent carbon sink in the World's forests" (Citations: 6,467) was authored by Pan, Y., a senior researcher affiliated with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Forest Service. (4) The bibliometric keyword co-occurrence network analysis of keywords illustrates that climate change and forestry carbon sink remain the focal research topics in this field. It is observed that the research hotspot of climate change and forest carbon sink is transitioning from ecological dynamics to socio-economic systems research. Nonetheless, carbon reduction and carbon sink continue to be recognized as constituting essential components in the climate stabilization portfolio. Ultimately, drawing from the aforementioned analytical research, this paper suggests four prospective avenues for advancing the epistemic frontier.
Keywords: Climate Change, Forestry carbon sink, bibliometric analysis, visualization, COOC VOS Visualization Topic Co-occurrence Citation Analysis Coupling Relationship Keyword Co-occurrence … … Thematic Evolution Cumulative Time Zone Chart Weighted Time Zone Chart Gradual Change in Attention
Received: 29 Aug 2024; Accepted: 05 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Zhang, Song and Nzinga Mayuka. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Qiaomin Zhang, Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou, China
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