Water Quality Modeling in Atlantic Region: Review, Science Mapping and Future Research Directions

Atlantic region is increasingly facing water quality issues as a result of many challenges, such as climate change and increasing urbanization. A promising way to addressing such items is by implementing water quality models (WQMs). Although, publications are increasing considerably in numbers, perhaps, we identified a shortage of bibliometric reviews based on the analysis of bibliographic data. To address this gap, descriptive statistics and bibliometric analyses using VOSviewer based on Scopus dataset is adopted to summarizes state of the art on the WQMing applications within the Atlantic region. First, a categorisation of the existent literature, founded on number of bibliometric data are critically analyzed based on a review of 1952 publications (2548 individual modelling applications) published between 1981 and 2021. Citations, co-authorship, and co-occurrence of words are exploited. Next, emerging trends such as the model types, modeled water body, modeled areas are spotted in the analysis. The meta-analysis reveals that applications of semi-empirical modeling frame-works (SWAT, 22.4%) dominate those of models for addressing water quality issues. Most of modelling applications have addressed watershed system (72.15%). Northwest and Northeast Atlantic have received the greatest attention, mostly the United States of America (41.64%). Additionally, a qualitative discussion is provided comparing the model dimensions, system, conceptualization, strengths, applications, and limitations. Finally, we provided the main impediments and suggested recommendations for enhancing WQMing science, infrastructure, and practices. These include the improvement in data availability, bridging gaps between experimentalists, modelers and stakeholders.