Bibliometric analysis of peer-reviewed literature on the Patos Lagoon, southern Brazil

Coastal lagoons provide several ecological resources and services with their functioning being mainly investigated in temperate areas. The Patos Lagoon, a subtropical system in southern Brazil, is one of the largest chocked coastal lagoons in the world. It provides habitat for numerous organisms and a range of ecosystem services. We performed a bibliometric analysis to identify and analyze the characteristics of studies carried out in the Patos Lagoon based on articles published in peer-reviewed journals indexed in the Science Citation Index Expanded database of Clarivate Analytics Web of Science and Scopus database. We found 360 articles published between 1965 and 2019 in 150 journals. The number of articles has increased in the last decades mainly resulting from national collaborative efforts. Most articles were published by Brazilian research institutions. Most studies were performed in the Patos Lagoon estuary, a Long-term Ecological Research program´s study site. Our study thus highlights the importance of long-term projects to the comprehension of subtropical coastal lagoons functioning and indicates knowledge gaps that must be addressed in future studies.