Current Status and Future Research of Groundwater Under Climate Change: A Bibliometric Analysis

Groundwater research on climate change is one of the significant topics in the field of natural sciences that is receiving increasing attention. However, no bibliometric research papers have been published that have analyzed the field for relevant knowledge graphs and relational networks. R-Bibliometrix and VOSviewer software are used to quantitatively analyze and visually represent the literature on the research of groundwater under climate change from 2010 to 2024 based on the Web of Science Core Collection. The findings demonstrated that a total of 4748 articles have been published on this topic, with publications increasing yearly. The most influential journal was the Journal of Hydrology, and the ten most influential papers were published from 2013 to 2017. The United States and China published significantly more research than any other country and had the closest cooperation, while Europe is the continent with the most publications. The Chinese Academy of Sciences was the leading institution in terms of the number of publications, and the Delft University of Technology was the institution with the highest average number of citations. British scholar Chris Soulsby was the author with the highest number of articles. The top three keywords were ‘climate change’, ‘groundwater’, and ‘model’. Machine-learning methods and remote-sensing techniques were emerging research hotspots that guided future research directions.