Abstract:

To provide scientific reference for soil quality evaluation and agricultural green development in China, this study used bibliometric methods to conduct quantitatively analysis, screened the hotspots and frontiers of soil quality evaluation based on minimum data set (MDS), and summarized the current methods and indicators used to select the MDS in soil quality research. By searching relevant literatures on CNKI and Web of Science from 1991 to 2022, we collected and screened 310 MDS. CiteSpace and VOSviewer were used to conduct co-occurrence analysis of the annual number of publications, countries/regions, institutions, journals, and to perform burst words and clusters analysis on keywords. Over the past 31 years, the publications in this field have gradually increased and remain in a phase of rapid development. China is the country with the largest number of publications. The journals with the largest number of publications are Acta Ecologica Sinica, Chinese Journal of Soil Science, and Ecological Indicators, respectively. The main research hotspots were the impact of agricultural management on soil quality, soil degradation and remediation, soil quality response to climate change, MDS screening methods and model construction, respectively. In the early stage, MDS in soil quality evaluation mainly used physical and chemical indicators, but with the development of soil health, the use of biological indicators has gradually increased. So the number of publications will be still in a rapid growth stage in the next period of time, and developing countries will play an important role in the globe. The core indicators are SOM/SOC, pH, TN, AP and BD, respectively. In future, research on MDS should focus on the building of soil health quality evaluation framework system, which combines static evaluation and dynamic monitoring in different scales and comprehensively reflects soil functions based on big data. The MDS and evaluation system corresponding to soil quality change under the background of climate change should be discussed, and evaluation model and optimal MDS (OMDS) should be constructed to accurately reflect soil quality change rules.

Key words: soil quality evaluation, minimum data set (MDS), CiteSpace, cluster analysis, evaluation indicators, soil healthy