Trends, patterns, and future directions in water resources management research in Australia: From scientometric insights to a dynamic socio-hydrological feedback model

Abstract

Water resources management focuses on the efficient and sustainable allocation, use, and conservation of water resources to meet both current and future demands, mitigating environmental impacts while ensuring the resilience of ecosystems and communities. Despite the growing body of literature on water resources management in Australia, there is a lack of comprehensive analysis that systematically maps its intellectual structure, thematic evolution, and global collaboration patterns to inform future research directions. This study performs a Scientometric analysis of water resource management research from 2000 to 2024 using data from the Scopus database. Key areas of analysis include citation trends, co-citation patterns, international collaboration dynamics, keyword co-occurrences, and bibliographic coupling, offering a holistic view of the research landscape. The study identifies the top 10 most-cited journal articles, highlighting seminal works such as Malone (2009) and Willis (2011) and recent impactful studies by Zhang (2020) and Gao (2017), reflecting current research trends. Co-citation analysis reveals thematic clusters, including legislative frameworks like the "Water Management Act 2000 (NSW)" and theoretical contributions like Olson’s "Logic of Collective Action". Co-authorship analysis uncovers significant collaborations between Australia, the United States, China, and Germany, with a notable increase in partnerships with China. The co-occurrence analysis of keywords identifies three primary themes: "Water Resource Management in Australia", "Regional Water Management", and "Climate Impact on Water Resources", focusing on areas like the Murray-Darling Basin. Bibliographic coupling highlights a few journals to interdisciplinary research. To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first comprehensive, determinants-oriented bibliometric and thematic mapping of WRM in Australia. This study fills that gap by offering a novel, country-specific, data-driven mapping of the Australian WRM research landscape, providing a benchmark for future scholarly efforts. This study proposes a dynamic socio-hydrological feedback model linking several variables including sustainable water management, integrated economic and agricultural practices, and their impacts on water sustainability and productivity, while accounting for climate change and groundwater depletion as moderating factors. This analysis provides key insights into the development and collaboration trends in water resource management, guiding future research.