Global research trends on RUSLE model: Bibliometric analysis using R Biblioshiny and VOSviewer

Soil erosion is an unavoidable natural phenomenon that significantly endangers soil fertility and global land management. The primary objective of this study was to perform a thorough bibliometric analysis of research pertaining to the extensively utilized RUSLE model for soil erosion modeling, aiming to identify significant research trends, impactful contributions, and existing knowledge gaps. This study selected articles published in English from 1987 to 2024 in the Scopus database. The analysis centered on indicators including the most productive year, journals, authors, keywords, topics, countries, affiliations, and citations. We used R Biblioshiny, VOSviewer, and mapchart.net to help us with the analysis. The results showed that 2023 was the best year for publications on this topic, with Environmental Earth Sciences and Modeling Earth Systems and Environment being the top journals. Renard K.G. and Li Y. were the authors, who wrote the most papers, and “soil erosion” was the word that was used the most. China and India also came out on top, which shows that they are more affected by erosion than other countries. Furthermore, the progression of RUSLE research has been identified as occurring in three distinct phases: an initial limited phase (1987–1996), a phase of steady growth (1997–2014) propelled by the integration of GIS and remote sensing, and a highly productive phase (2015– till present moment) characterized by technological advancements and heightened global awareness, especially in 2023. These results show how modern technologies are becoming more important for making soil erosion models more accurate and scalable. This bibliometric analysis gives a full picture of how soil erosion research is changing around the world. It gives useful information for future research and supports sustainable land management and farming practices that aim to stop land degradation.