A Review of Agricultural Land Functions: Analysis and Visualization Based on Bibliometrics

Abstract

Achieving the goals of global food security and sustainable agricultural land use requires research that understands the processes and mechanisms of change in agricultural land systems. Agricultural land function is a suitable research area. Therefore, this paper collected 1643 papers on agricultural land function from the Web of Science Core Collection as research materials. HistCite, CiteSpace, and VOSviewer were used as the bibliometrics analysis tools to study basic information, research progress, hotspots, and frontiers in agricultural land function. The results showed that over the past 30 years, publications on agricultural land function have increased, and the dominant authors and institutions were located in the United States, China, Europe, etc. Land use, agriculture, and multifunctionality were research hotspots in this field. The research frontier included the interaction analysis between land use pattern and function, the evaluation and valuation of agricultural land function, the interaction and driving factors between agricultural land functions, and the relationship between agricultural land function and sustainability. This study could help researchers further understand the research status on agricultural land function, playing a fundamental role in the sustainable utilization of the agricultural land system and the realization of global food security goals.