Assessment of wetland potential and bibliometric review: a critical analysis of the Ramsar sites of India

Abstract

This study focussed on effective bibliometric analysis of research on Ramsar sites in India within the last 30 years using VOS viewer software. The study focused on the estimation of the current areal extent and meteorological impact on wetland together with bibliometric analysis. The online data source of Web of Science has been used to extract all the relevant documents on Indian Ramsar sites published within a period of 1989 to 2020. The main objective is to analyze the trend of research on the Indian Ramsar site both qualitatively and quantitatively. The peak of research growth has been lifted after the twentieth century as most of the Indian water bodies have been designated or put into the land from this period. A geographical location-based mapping was prepared based on the number of publications during the study period to observe the growing research interest in wetland studies in India. The highest publications have been documented on East Calcutta Wetland located in West Bengal followed by Loktak Lake in Manipur, Deepor Beel in Assam and others. The most frequently used keywords were “Ramsar site”, “India”, “wetland”, “wetlands”, “remote sensing” etc. India published most of the documents on wetland studies in the Indian context. England, Australia, Canada also had various international collaborative works with Indian researchers. The research output shows an upward research trend on Indian Ramsar sites both quantitative and qualitatively. Such kind of research can provide a panoramic view towards the worldwide research trend and help to generate further effective approaches for the betterment of our environment.