Analysis on land use research progress by Citespace

Abstract: The Citespace software is an important tool which could identify and show the new research trends and dynamic situation in scientific literatures. In this article, the data mining and quantitative analysis were carried out with the subject terms of 'land use' by Citespace software by searching 695 papers from the journal . In this paper, it also showed the theme, content and development tendency of the research field of land use engineering by visual model with five years interval. The research results showed that: 1) In the period of 2001-2015 a, the systematic of the research content and theme is gradually increased in land use engineering field. It is developed from the initial stages of the weak convergence of research topic and content, into the stage of systematic research with distinctive themes, which were closely linked and rich. Especially in the period 2006-2010, the research topic and keywords have good relationship with each other, the features of this period research showed in the field of agricultural classification, land consolidation and land use change and pattern. In the period of 2011-2015, the research emphasis on demands of society and land management, the basic farmland planning, high-standard basic farmland construction and agricultural classification were emerged systematically in the field of land consolidation, the research contents were more completely. 2) The research of land use has achieved abundant research results in recent 15 a including that the numbers of published articles increasing, the research fields becoming clustered with research topic and keywords related closely and following the advanced achievement and focus on renewing the theories of land use. The research hot-spots and features are increasingly distinctive and prominent in the field of land use engineering. The subject of land use change and pattern are always concerned; the basic and applied research on agricultural classification are widely used and it is a high explosive research area; Land consolidation has become a focus field of scholars concentrated, and has formed rich theoretical and practical results. 3) In this paper, it has proved that land use research not only included theoretical research, which could help developing land use discipline system, but also included practical applying research, which could help summarizing development rule of land use research, the theory and practical applying of agricultural classification was a good example. It also suggests to enhance the basic theoretical research in the field of the land use projects, to form a rich land use engineering theory for guiding practice, and gradually to form a scientific system of the land use engineering discipline. We should make full use of the opportunities that land use engineering officially became a nationally technical occupation, to develop and establish the land use engineering discipline of China.