An overview of water erosion modeling in china: a bibliometric and statistical analysis

Highlights

● Water erosion models mainly applied in central China at large scales.

● After 2006, the focus shifted from erosion characteristics to influencing factors and spatio-temporal analysis.

● The study areas are primarily concentrated in southeastern and central China.

● Limitations included lack of field validation, restricted model applicability, weak physical models, and paucity of research on erosion mechanisms.

● Physical models have limited accuracy and application range.

Abstract

Soil erosion models are effective tools for assessing soil erosion indicators and simulating erosion processes. China has some of the most severe soil erosion in the world. To better apply soil erosion models to address soil erosion issues, it is necessary to understand the development process and current status of soil erosion modeling research in China. In this study, a combination of bibliometric analysis and statistical methods was used to review and organize Chinese soil erosion models (1982–2022) from various perspectives, including keywords, model operations, model classification, model spatiotemporal scales, and model geographical applications. This findings of this analysis indicate that the study of soil erosion models in China mainly focuses on large scales (regional and large river basins) using empirical models including USLE, RUSLE, and CSLE. The research areas are primarily concentrated in southeastern and central China. The research content has gradually shifted from studying soil erosion characteristics to analyzing influencing factors, spatiotemporal evolution of erosion, and erosion process and morphology stages. However, there are several issues in current Chinese soil erosion modeling research. These include a lack of validation of model application results with field measurements, limited application areas for the models, and relatively weak research on erosion process mechanisms. On this basis, it is recommended that future research should increase the observation of soil erosion processes and establish methods for data or mathematical formula conversion based on different geographical environments. Also, there is a need to strengthen research on erosion process mechanisms. The findings of this study should provide a valuable resource for researchers to future understand the development process and current issues of Chinese soil erosion models, providing insights for future research directions.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

Physically based model / empirical model / sediment yield / soil erosion modeling / bibliometric analysis / water erosion

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Acknowledgements

This research is jointly supported by the Natural Science Basic Research Program of Shaanxi Province, China (2021JZ-17), Agricultural Key-scientific and Core-technological Project of Shaanxi Province, China (2024NYGG011), and the Shaanxi Agricultural Collaborative Innovation and Extension Alliance, China (LMR202204). The authors thank the editors and anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions, which greatly improved this report.

Compliance with ethics guidelines

Wenli Rao, Qingfeng Zhang, Fengbao Zhang, Lifeng Yuan, Zicheng Zheng, Longshan Zhao, and Xiangyang Song declare that they have no conflicts of interest or financial conflicts to disclose. This article does not contain any studies with human or animal subjects performed by any of the authors.

RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS

The Author(s) 2024. Published by Higher Education Press. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)