Research progress and prospect of marine carbon sink

Abstract

The ocean has great potential as a carbon sink. Under the background of global climate change, marine carbon sink is an effective way to build ecological civilization and achieve carbon neutrality in the new era, and has received extensive attention from academia. As an efficient long-term carbon sink, the carbon sink mechanism, carbon sink effect, carbon sink technology, carbon sink accounting, and carbon sink trading market construction of the marine systems are becoming new topics that need to be explored in various disciplines. Based on the analysis of the origin of research and conceptual connotation of marine carbon sink and by examining carbon sinks and carbon sources, this study combined the relevant research literature of marine carbon sink in the China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) and the Web of Science (WOS) core databases, and used bibliometric tools to quantitatively compare and analyze the main characteristics, such as the number of publications, journals, authors, and institutions, of marine carbon sink research in China and internationally. Through keyword clustering and emergence and co-occurrence knowledge maps, the research hotspots, frontier fields at different stages, and evolution trends of themes were explored. The results show that the number of publications on marine carbon sink research in China and internationally has shown a fluctuating growth trend. Liu Jihua and Christian J. Sanders are the most influential authors in this field. Foreign countries have carried out extensive cooperation in this field, and Chinese researchers have also formed small-scale academic research teams. Research institutions are mainly universities and research institutes, focusing on coastal areas; the research directions are gradually diversified and the hotspots are clear. The key research directions of marine carbon sinks are examined, and the key contents that need to be paid attention to in future research are discussed: multidisciplinary studies should guide the research to promote the unified carbon sink market research of land and seas; studies should be based on the carbon sinks of coastal wetland and mariculture environment to realize new breakthroughs of marine carbon sink research; to build a marine carbon sink protection management system with a comprehensive ecological compensation mechanism as the guide; to explore marine carbon sink application models based on research on theories and technological innovations related to marine carbon sinks; and to explore blue carbon cooperation mechanisms in countries along the Maritime Silk Road with a focus on marine carbon sink cooperation research. This study examined the status of research of marine carbon sinks in China and internationally to promote the further scientific development of research in this field.

Keywords

• |dual-carbon targets|marine carbon sink|analysis|research prospect|citespace|knowledge map