矿产预测研究五十年发展轨迹与热点变迁管窥:来自文献计量学的视角
A Review on the Fifty-Year Development Trajectory and Hotspot Evolution of Mineral Prospectivity Mapping: A Bibliometrics Perspective
矿产勘查是护航国家资源安全与产业供应链稳定的基础性工作,作为矿产勘查的核心环节,矿产预测在大数据与人工智能技术的助推下已实现跨越式发展,成为地球科学中的热门研究领域,积累了大量的研究文献.本文采用文献计量学方法,以国际数学地球科学学会三本会刊在1969年至2025年间发表的935篇矿产预测主题论文为数据源,分析和探讨了矿产预测近五十多年的研究现状、发展轨迹与热点变迁.文献作者、机构和国别的统计结果表明,Carranza E.J.M.和左仁广分别以署名作者和第一/通讯作者的身份成为本领域最高产和高被引的学者,中国是矿产预测领域最大的论文产出国,中国地质大学(武汉)的发文量和总被引频次在全球机构中位居榜首,本研究领域的合作存在较强的地域导向性,高水平、常态化的国际协同研究网络尚未形成.根据关键词的热点变迁将矿产预测研究分为奠基期(1969-1990年)、发展期(1991-2010年)和繁荣期(2011-2025年),不同时期的主题任务和发展轨迹取决于该时代热门技术和算法的发展水平.奠基期是以矿产资源评价任务为主的阶段,对应了地质统计学(变异函数和克里金插值)热度遥遥领先的时期;发展期GIS技术的兴起和广泛应用助力了矿产预测逐渐替代矿产资源评价成为主流科学任务,而繁荣期机器学习算法的盛行则让矿产智能预测成为热度断档领先的研究主题.矿产预测研究最新的热点和发展趋势是从倚重单一高性能预测模型,转向对智能预测模型内部机制的深入探索与优化,利用前沿人工智能技术解决决策过程黑箱属性和样本稀缺等矿产预测的固有瓶颈问题.优越的深度学习算法近年来收获了最高的热度,但经典的浅层学习算法,如擅长处理高维数据及非线性问题的支持向量机和具有强大抗过拟合能力的随机森林,依然因其高度适配小样本矿产预测任务而成为繁荣期本领域学者的热门选择.本研究借助量化统计分析和可视化工具,不仅为理解矿产预测的学科发展脉络提供了宏观和全面的视角,也为把握本领域未来智能预测发展方向提供了参考.
Mineral exploration is a fundamental task for safeguarding national resource security and the stability of industrial supply chain. As a core step of mineral exploration, mineral prospectivity mapping (MPM) has undergone transformative development, driven by big data and artificial intelligence, emerging as a prominent research field within Earth science and accumulating a substantial volume of literature. In this study, we employ bibliometric methods to analyze and discuss the research status, developmental trajectory, and hotspot evolution of MPM over the past five decades, based on a dataset of 935 relevant publications from three flagship journals of the International Association for Mathematical Geosciences, spanning from 1969 to 2025. Bibliometric statistics on authors, institutions, and countries reveal that Carranza E.J.M. and Zuo Renguang are the most highly productive and highly cited scholars in the field as listed as author and first/corresponding author, respectively. China is the largest contributor of publications in this field, and the China University of Geosciences (Wuhan) ranks first in global institutions in both publication volume and total citation. The analysis of collaboration networks indicates a strong regional orientation, lacking a high-level and regular international cooperative research network. The evolution of MPM, based on the hotspot analysis of keywords, is divided into three distinct stages, namely the foundation stage (1969-1990), the expansion stage (1991-2010), and the boom stage (2011-2025). The thematic focus and developmental trajectory of each stage are determined by the prevailing technologies and algorithms of the era. The foundation stage, focusing on mineral resource assessment, was dominated by geostatistics (variogram and Kriging). The rise and widespread application of GIS technology during the expansion stage facilitated the shift of MPM into the mainstream scientific task. In the boom stage, the prevalence of machine learning algorithms led to the dominance of intelligent MPM in the thematic tasks. Recent research hotspots and trends indicate a shift from relying solely on high-performance predictive models towards in-depth exploration and optimization of the internal mechanisms of intelligent models. The focus is on leveraging cutting-edge AI technologies to address inherent challenges such as the black-box nature of decision processes and sample scarcity. Although advanced deep learning algorithms have gained significant traction, classic shallow learning algorithms, such as support vector machine, which exhibits great performance in processing high-dimensional data and nonlinear problems, and random forest characterized by its strong resistance to overfitting, remain popular choices among scholars in this field during the boom stage due to their high suitability for few-shot MPM tasks. By leveraging quantitative statistical and visualization tools, this study provides a macro and comprehensive perspective for understanding the development of MPM, and offers critical insights into future research directions of intelligent prediction in MPM.
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