| Forest fire does not only hinder forestry production but also hampers economic, social and ecological development. Therefore, the forestry industry is faced with arduous management tasks in the monitoring, disaster relief and post-disaster reconstruction of forest fires. In order to understand Chinese science situation and location of forest fire, it is necessary to make a comparison of research levels and research structures of different countries and conduct an analysis of their competitive strengths of researches in this field in this increasingly globalized world to facilitate a more rational reading of the current state, a better understanding of the challenges we face and more suggestions on forest fire research in China.In this paper a statistical study was made on the research literature from home and abroad on this subject from2003to2012, comparisons were conducted in the quantity and publishing time of papers, the distribution of research institutions, research expertise, research funds, top cited papers, the relevant journals and the subjects involved, and the research trends, and an analysis was carried out on the research levels of different countries in the world, including China, in the past10years with the theories and methodologies of bibliometrics and competitive intelligence and databases of Web of Science, CNKI and so on. Taking America, Canada and Australia as benchmark countries, this paper elaborated on the gap between China and the three abovementioned countries in these aspects. Key words frequency study revealed the status quo and trend of forest fire research in America, Canada, Australia, China and the world at large. On the basis of these studies, the research fields with the highest key words frequency were selected and an empirical analysis was conducted in the cases of America and China. Then America, one of the benchmark countries, was chosen as a comparative object of research competitiveness with China. Four indicators of research competitiveness, namely, the quantity of articles, citation frequency, citation frequency of top-cited papers and citation frequency of hot papers in2013were set up to analyze the strengths, weaknesses and key success factors of forest fire researches of America and China.It showed that forest fire research was gaining more attention with an annual increase of papers on forest fire internationally. A total of10,246papers,4,943institutions,22,610researchers and1,130funded institutions were engaged in this area in130countries and regions globally, covering93disciplines with1,152journals involved. One article authored by Westerling, AL from University of California, San Diego was cited for820times, ranked as the most frequently cited paper. Ten out of the20top-cited papers were from American researchers, showing the influence that American researchers gained in this area. Bergeron Y from Universite du Quebec en Abitibi-Temiscamingue. Canada, published as many as109papers in this area, taking a commanding lead. The American Bureau of Forestry published769papers for the recent ten years, topping research institutions in this field worldwide. Among the top twenty funded institutions with the highest number of article publication, institutions financed by the U.S. National Science Foundation ranked first and Canada, second. Research programs with the support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China and Chinese Academy of Sciences also produced a considerable number of papers. The Hollandish journal Forest Ecology and Management published the most articles on forest fire, with937relevant articles in total for the past ten years.Compared with benchmark countries, the articles published on international journals from Chinese research institutions were mostly co-authored with overseas institutions. The total amount of published articles and individually published articles of Chinese researchers was much lower than that of the U.S., Canada and Australia, demonstrating a gap in research level between Chinese researchers and the international level in this field. Chinese Academy of Sciences, with140articles published in the past ten years, topped Chinese research institutions in the quantity of articles published on international journals. Sixty-four articles supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China were published, the highest number of the same category. Forest Ecology and Management ranked the top of the international journals that Chinese researchers published papers on, similar to the situation in America and Australia, showing that some of China’s researches met the international advanced standard. However, the small quantity also revealed that the overall research level of China lagged behind that of developed countries significantly. China’s researches on forest fire covered31areas, involving ecology, geology, forestry and meteorology. In the analysis of worldwide research trend of forest fire.30,323key words and their frequency were obtained through duplicate removal and amalgamation of literature key words, among which "vegetation","dynamics","wildfire","management" and "disturbance" were the top five the focuses of global forest fire researches in the past ten years. The research trend of China conformed to that of the world in "vegetation","dynamics" and "management". But "emissions""model" and "patterns" registered higher frequency in China’s researches than those of America, Canada and Australia, showing more attention paid to emissions, models and patterns of forest fire in China’s researches.To gain a better understanding of China’s research structure of forest fire, this article made an analysis of the domestic research in this area with CNKI database. It showed that5,602papers were published and30research institutions were involved in forest fire research. Northeast Forestry University ranked top in the quantity of published papers. Shu Lifu, from the State Forestry Administration’s Key Open Laboratory of Forest Protection Institute of Forest Ecology, Environment and Protection, Chinese Academy of Forestry, published the most papers and Tian Xiaorui and Wang Mingyu, from the same institute, also held leads. An article published on Journal of Zhejiang Forestry College enjoyed the highest frequency of citations, namely,63times. Research programs funded by National Natural Science Foundation of China produced the most scientific output during2003and2012. Fifteen domestic journals were involved in this filed. The journal Forest Fire Prevention contained the largest number of articles, as many as692, on forest fire. Forestry, plant protection, security science and disaster prevention were the major relevant fields and forest fire prevention, the responding measures, Da Xing’an Mountain range, geographic information system, modis, forest fire fighting, forest fire monitoring, remote sensing, gis and wireless sensor network were the focuses of domestic research on forest fire.On the basis of these researches, five focuses of forest fire researches were selected to make an empirical analysis of researches in China and America. Four indicators were established, namely, the quantity of published articles, the citation frequency of the articles and the citation frequency of top-cited articles in the recent ten years and the citation frequency of hot papers in2013to determine the research competitiveness of China and America in this filed. With the theories and methodologies of competitive intelligence, an analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of forest fire researches in China and America was made and scientific and technological investment, international cooperation, research crew, discipline layout, research scope and fund policies were found to be key success factors. In addition, we compared and analized the research methods of the top20high cited articles on forest fires in global and in China, improvement measures and advices on forest fire research were proposed at the end of this paper after an in-depth study and suggestions to Chinese forest fire studies were raised.With an innovative employment of bibliometrics, this paper made an analysis of forest fire research structure of China, developed countries and the world as a whole and indicators of research competitiveness in forest fire study were established. The word frequency analysis was utilized for the first time to obtain a clear understanding of the focuses of forest fire research in China, developed countries and the world at large and then an empirical analysis of forest fire researches in China and America was conducted. Benchmark analysis, SWOT analysis, key success factors analysis in competitive intelligence were applied innovatively and improvement measures and advices on China’s forest fire research were thence put forward. |
PDF Full Text Request