Welcome to Chinese Agricultural Science Bulletin,

Chinese Agricultural Science Bulletin ›› 2026, Vol. 42 ›› Issue (14): 172-180.doi: 10.11924/j.issn.1000-6850.casb2025-0779

• Original article • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Impact of Interactions Between Microplastics and Heavy Metals in Soil: Based on Bibliometric and Visualization Analysis

WANG Yu1,2(), WANG Xie1,2,3, LUO Yongxia2,3()   

  1. 1 Jiangsu University of Science and Technology, Zhenjiang, Jiangsu 212100
    2 Institute of Agricultural Resources and Environment, Sichuan Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Chengdu 610066
    3 Key Laboratory of Environment-friendly and Efficient Water-saving Technology and Equipment for Hilly Agriculture in Sichuan, Chengdu 610066
  • Received:2025-09-09 Revised:2026-05-18 Online:2026-07-25 Published:2026-07-24

Abstract:

The combined pollution of microplastics and heavy metals in soil is a research frontier in the field of environmental science. To clarify the current research status and development trend in this field, this study adopted the bibliometric method and took ‘soil’, ‘microplastics’, and ‘heavy metals’ as the key words to analyze the relevant literatures included in Web of Science (486 articles) and China National Knowledge Infrastructure (386 articles) from 2017 to 2025. The CiteSpace software was used to analyze the keywords co-occurrence, clustering, and timeline features. The results showed that, both at home and abroad, the number of research papers on the interaction between microplastics and heavy metals in soil had been increasing continuously. Especially after 2019, the growth rate became significant, and the growth rate of related international papers was even more remarkable. China was the country with the largest cumulative number of published papers in this field, accounting for nearly 60% of the total internationally published papers. The institution that had published the most papers internationally was the Chinese Academy of Sciences, while the one that had published the most papers domestically was Northwest A&F University. There was relatively little cooperation among these institutions. Domestic research hotspots were mainly concentrated in the directions of ‘adsorption’, ‘combined pollution’, ‘migration’, ‘microorganisms’, etc., focusing on the mechanism of combined action and its impact on ecological effects. The international research hotspots mainly focused on aspects such as ‘adsorption’, ‘pollution’, and ‘biomes’, which were consistent with the domestic research hotspots. The above research results suggest that the ecological effects caused by the interaction between microplastics and heavy metals in soil will remain an important direction and hot topic in this field in the future. It is necessary to strengthen research collaboration among academic institutions in the future.

Key words: soil, microplastics, heavy metals, bibliometrics, CiteSpace

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