Exploring the international research landscape of blue carbon: Based on scientometrics analysis

Blue carbon, a concept that emerged in the last decade, has received increasing attention in recent years. The development of blue carbon as a nature-based solution is crucial to global climate governance, biodiversity conservation, and restoration of fishery resources. This study utilized CiteSpace visualization software to conduct bibliometric and systematic analyses of 3474 papers retrieved from the Web of Science Core Collection in 2003–2022, depicting a comprehensive framework of international research on blue carbon, exploring hotspots and trends, and proposing future directions and implications for ocean and coastal management. Overall, blue carbon research has experienced the early exploration period (2003–2007) based on scientific concepts, the development period (2008–2015) of research on carbon sequestration mechanisms and functions of different organisms and ecosystems, and the outbreak period (2016–2022) of carbon sink system quantification and management based on model prediction. Co-authorship analysis indicated that blue carbon research collaborates well across intuitions and countries, while collaboration among authors needs to be strengthened. Thematic evolution and hotspot analysis based on cited references and keywords revealed that coastal wetlands, especially mangroves, are a popular research theme, and the functional protection and development of management strategies for coastal ecosystems are major current research hotspots. In addition, it emphasized the need to focus on the protection, restoration and creation of blue carbon ecosystems (BCEs), develop sustainable marine ranching to promote blue carbon trading, explore more potential emerging blue carbon, and strengthen the management of blue carbon from the social level in the future. This paper combines traditional bibliometric review with modern visual analysis software to carry out network metrics, clustering and visualization of the blue carbon thematic literature from multiple perspectives, which reflects its novelty. It provides the latest, in-depth and comprehensive insights into blue carbon research that will serve as valuable reference for relevant scholars, managers and governments.