Retrospect and Reflection on Chinese Fir Studies under the Perspective of Humanities and Social Sciences: a Knowledge Graph VisualizationAnalysis Based on CiteSpace

From the perspective of humanities and social sciences and with the help of CiteSpace, a bibliometric analysis tool, this paper combs relevant literatures on Chinese fir (Cunninghamia lanceolata) studies in CNKI and ponders over future studies. The results show that the number of published papers on Chinese fir studies presents a trend of increasing before decreasing; the research institutes involve a wide variety of colleges and universities, such as agricultural and forestry, comprehensive, normal and national ones; the research periods lasted from the Ming Dynasty to the contemporary era and are concentrated mainly in the Qing Dynasty; the study areas are focused mainly on the provinces and regions of southern China where Chinese fir is grown. The studies have experienced the inceptive stage before 1992, the rising stage from 1992 to 2007, and the developing stage from 2008 to date, exhibiting the features of keeping up with the national policy and serving the local development. The hot spot of Chinese wood studies includes four subjects: fir wood management, forestry contract, timber trade, and forest carbon sink. It is further proposed that Chinese fir studies under the perspective of humanities and social sciences can be carried forward at economic, political, social, cultural, ecological, and other different levels in combination with requirements of the national development strategy in the new era.