The evolving landscape of sea-level rise science from 1990 to 2021

Abstract

As sea-level rise (SLR) accelerates due to climate change, its multidisciplinary field of science has similarly expanded, from about 50 documents in 1990 to nearly 15,000 documents from 1990 to 2021. Here, big data, bibliometric techniques are adopted to systematically analyse this growing, large-scale literature. Four main research clusters (themes) emerge: (I) geological dimensions and biogeochemical cycles, (II) impacts, risks, and adaptation, (III) physical components of sea-level change, and (IV) coastal ecosystems and habitats, with 16 associated sub-themes. This analysis provides insights into the prioritisation of research agendas, the challenges and opportunities of future integrative, global scale assessment processes (e.g., next IPCC report), and how effectively this discipline is achieving societal impact. For example, the relative importance of sub-themes evolves consistently with a decline in pure science analysis towards solution-focused topics associated with SLR risks such as surface elevation change, flooding, ice sheets dynamics, coastal erosion and squeeze, and engineered shorelines.

Climate change science is evolving toward adaptation and mitigation solutions

“…Therefore, duplicates are automatically avoided if an article is captured by more than one layer of the query string. This yielded n = 129,494 unique articles ( n = 33,186 during 1990–2009, n = 38,957 during 2010–2015, n = 57,351 during 2016–2021), where the data of titles, authors, affiliations, publication year, journals, conferences, citations, document type, abstract, keywords, fundings, and cited references of each article were retrieved and analyzed (for details, see Khojasteh, Haghani, et al, 2023). The adopted search query is presented in Table S1.…”

“…Systematic studies on extreme heat events suggested that heat adaptation solutions largely depend on geographic region and national income, with further international collaborative solutions required moving forward (Hintz et al, 2018; Turek‐Hankins et al, 2021). A bibliometric examination of sea‐level rise science underlined that new research is geared toward more solution‐focused topics associated with risks of rising sea levels and should be more responsive to ongoing research topics related to societal and policy challenges (Khojasteh, Haghani, et al, 2023).…”

The evolution and future of research on Nature-based Solutions to address societal challenges

“…Cited references that are frequently co-cited by NbS articles with a particular theme, can be thematically categorised into research clusters, where their citing articles represent a particular cluster of NbS research and the cited references themselves form the knowledge foundation of the cluster. The cited references with the greatest influence on each cluster were identified using three primary metrics: local citation counts, bursts of citation count, and reference centrality, and can be cited together with references belonging to other clusters 72 . These research clusters represent individual streams of the NbS research landscape.…”

Editorial: Climate risks, resilience and adaptation in coastal systems

“…The most common keywords of the articles mentioned above are climate change/risk, adaptation, and hazard/threat/compound, which align with the proposed topic. Besides, they focus on vulnerability assessment, community risk management, sea level rise, flooding, extreme sea level, adaptation options, complex ecological modeling, coastal landscape ecology, precautionary strategies, uncertainty, stakeholders' participation, and coral reefs sub-areas of research, several of which have been among the most common terms in the last 10 years in coastal risk, vulnerability, impacts, and adaptation literature (Khojasteh et al, 2022).…”