Sustainability of water use in agriculture is a line of research that has gained in importance worldwide. The present study reviewed 25 years of international research on sustainable water use in agriculture. A bibliometric analysis was developed to sample 2084 articles. Results indicate exponential growth in the number of articles published per year, with research in this field having acquired a global scale. Environmental Science and Agricultural and Biological Sciences are the main categories. Three journals—Agricultural Water Management, Water Resources Management and Nongye Gongcheng Xuebao Agricultural Engineering—published the most of the articles. China, the U.S., Australia, India and Germany produced the most research. The three institutions that published the most articles were all Chinese (Chinese Academy of Sciences, China Agricultural University and Northwest A&F University). The most cited authors were Ridoutt, Hoekstra and Zhang. The keywords most frequently used include: water-use, irrigation, water-management, water-supply, and sustainability. A network map shows three clusters that focus on the environmental, agronomic and management aspects. The findings of this study can assist researchers in this field by providing an overview of research on the sustainability of hydric resources.

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Within a context of scarce water resources for agriculture, rainwater harvesting constitutes a promising alternative that has been studied by different disciplines in recent years. This article analyses the dynamics of global research on rainwater harvesting for agricultural irrigation over the last two decades. To do this, qualitative systematic analysis and quantitative bibliometric analysis have been carried out. The results reveal that this line of research is becoming increasingly important within research on irrigation. Environmental sciences and agricultural and biological sciences are the most relevant subject areas. Agricultural Water Management, Physics and Chemistry of the Earth, and Irrigation and Drainage are the journals that have published the most articles on the subject. India, China, the United States (USA), South Africa, and the Netherlands are the countries that lead this line of research. Although significant progress has been made in this subject area, it is necessary to increase the number of studies on the capacity of rainwater harvesting systems to cover irrigation needs in different farming contexts, the factors that determine their adoption by farmers, the economic and financial feasibility of their implementation, and their contribution to mitigating global climate change.

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The relevance of forests to sustain human well-being and the serious threats they face have led to a notable increase of research works on forest ecosystem services during the last few years. This paper analyses the worldwide research dynamics on forest ecosystem services in the period from 1998 to 2017. A bibliometric analysis of 4284 articles was conducted. The results showed that the number of published research articles has especially increased during the last five years. In total, 68.63% of the articles were published in this period. This research line experiences a growing trend superior to the general publishing trend on forest research. In spite of this increase, its relative significance within the forest research is still limited. The most productive subject areas corresponded to Environmental Science, Agricultural and Biological Sciences and Social Sciences Economic topics are understudied. The scientific production is published in a wide range of journals. The three first publishing countries are United States, China and the United Kingdom. The most productive authors are attached to diverse research centres and their contributions are relatively recent. A high level of international cooperation has been observed between countries, institutions and authors. The findings of this study are useful for researchers since they give them an overview of the worldwide research trends on forest ecosystem services.