A Bibliometric Analysis of Global Research on Climate Change and Agriculture from 1985 to 2023

Abstract

With increasing concentrations of atmospheric greenhouse gases, the interaction between climate change and agriculture is receiving widespread attention as part of food security and sustainable human development. However, a comprehensive summary of knowledge in the field of climate change and agriculture from a scientometric perspective is still lacking. Here, we selected 25,872 papers related to climate change and agriculture from the Web of Science Core Collection database for the period 1985 to 2023 and used VOSviewer software to reveal the research status and trends. The main results were as follows: (1) the number of papers in this field showed a rapidly increasing trend after 2007, with a clear interdisciplinary characteristic; (2) The United States was the most influential country in this field with 6819 papers and 363,109 citations. China had the second highest number of papers (3722 papers), but the Chinese Academy of Sciences was the most influential institution with the most papers. On an author level, Pete Smith was the most influential; (3) All keywords were divided into four different research topics, such as the impact of climate change on agriculture, climate change mitigation and adaptation in agriculture, and crop growth in response to climate change. Among them, some keywords related to climate change adaptation were the most recent topics of interest in this field. These findings provide effective scientific references for relevant scientists and practitioners to better conduct future theoretical and practical research on climate change and agriculture.