Abstract: As an ideal ‘indicator’ for directly monitoring plant photosynthesis, solar-induced chlorophyll fluorescence(SIF) has a rapid response to variations in plant physiological status. SIF is becoming one of the most active research direction in vegetation remote sensing. This study conducted a systematic literature review on topics of relevance to SIF. To do so, there are 786 SIF-related papers published during 1982−2021 were collected from the Scopus database. Based on VOSviewer, the visual bibliometric analysis was applied to analyze these papers from the perspective of country, institution, author, journal and keyword. The results show that the number of SIF articles published per year is rising rapidly. Among all the countries, United States, China and Germany published 285, 263, and 166, making them the top three countries that have the most SIF papers during the study period. Germany has the highest citations per publication (56.2) and the largest number of cooperative countries(36). Nanjing University, California Institute of Technology, and University of Valencia have made outstanding contributions to the development of this field as they have not only the large number of publications but also the high h-indices Among the scholars in this area, Guanter L(Polytechnic University of Valencia), Zhang Y(Nanjing University), Frankenberg C(California Institute of Technology), Liu L(Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth, Chinese Academy of Sciences), and Rascher U(Jülich Research Centre), are currently the most productive, having published more than 40 papers. The Journal Remote Sensing of Environment has the highest number of SIF articles (92) and the highest H-index (40), and Global Change Biology has the highest citations per publication (65.6) in this field. The keyword analysis shows that SIF is a highly multidisciplinary area mainly involving geoscience, ecology, agronomy, plant physiology across a range of spatial and temporal scales. Currently, the most active research topics are the monitor of plant physiological status and stress condition, the acquisition methods of SIF measurements, and the applications of SIF in remote sensing such as terrestrial carbon cycle. China leads the world of overall research focus in this field, which, however, still should have a further improvement of its influence.

Key words: Solar-induced chlorophyll fluorescence, Vegetation remote sensing, Bibliometric analysis, VOSviewer