Research Analysis of Spartina alterniflora Based on Bibliometrics by VOSviewer

Spartina alterniflora is native to the Atlantic coast of the United States, which is recognized as an alien species along the Pacific coast. S. alterniflora has attracted much attention in related fields for many years. In order to deepen the understanding of S. alterniflora related research, and explore the future research priorities, the paper analyzed its research progress quantitatively and protracted visual knowledge graph by VOSviewer software with the key words of S. alterniflora during 1972-2020 from Web of Science database by bibliometric analysis method. The number of published papers and citations of S. alterniflora has been rising during 1972-2020, and shown a rapid development trend since 2004. The research areas covered ecology, environmental science, marine and freshwater biology. The publications were mainly contributed by countries in America, Asia, Europe and Oceania, and the United States ranked the 1st followed by China. The topics of S. alterniflora focus on its effects on salt marsh ecosystem, biogeochemical cycle, physiology and interspecific interaction. S. alterniflora′s contributions to blue carbon and responses to global climate change is the current hot topic in coastal salt marshes.