Forward osmosis research trends in desalination and wastewater treatment: A review of research trends over the past decade

Issues of water scarcity and water security have driven the rapid development of various technologies to ensure water sustainability. The forward osmosis (FO) membrane process has been widely recognized as one of the more promising technologies to play an important role in alleviating the issues of water sustainability. Extensive research has been carried out worldwide to explore the potential of FO in desalination, water and wastewater treatment and reclamation. It is of the utmost importance to understand the topics of interest and research trends to further advance the development of FO process technology. In this study, a bibliometric analysis based on the Scopus database was carried out to identify and understand the global research trends of FO process based on 6 main analyses: basic growth trends, journals, countries, institutions, authors, and keywords. A total of 1462 article published between 1967-2018 were extracted from Scopus and used as the raw data for bibliometric analysis using VOSviewer software. The total number of FO articles has sharply increased since 2009 and stabilized at around 250 publications in the past three years. FO research started to diversify after the appearance of commercial FO membranes with improved characteristics, enabling the researchers to employ them for various application studies. Keywords analysis showed that the main directions of FO research could be categorized into three clusters: application of FO, membrane fouling study, and FO membrane synthesis. These bibliometric results provide a valuable reference and information on current research directions of FO for researchers and industry practitioners

Impacts of Outmigration on Land Management in a Nepali Mountain Area

This study examines the impacts of migration on land management in a mountain area of Nepal, complemented by insights from a smaller case study in Bolivia. Migration to cities and abroad increasingly leaves behind fragmented families and the elderly. Livelihoods as well as the management of land are affected by a changing labor force, traditional knowledge, remittances, and other consequences of migration. In this study, we explore how these issues affect land and its management, and what measures and strategies are being taken by the people left behind. Mapping methodology from the World Overview of Conservation Approaches and Technologies (WOCAT) was used to assess land management practices in a subwatershed in Western Nepal. In combination with other research methods, the mapping enabled a better understanding of the impacts of migration on land degradation and conservation. Preliminary findings reveal negative as well as positive impacts. The main degradation problem found was the growth of invasive alien plant species, while overall vegetation and forest cover had increased, and some types of degradation, such as soil erosion or landslides, were even reduced. A feminization of agriculture has also been observed in the Nepali case study, in contrast to the Bolivian case which revealed that whole families were migrating, with mostly men temporarily returning to manage the land. The findings of this study suggest that a more differentiated and context-specific view is required when looking at the impact of migration on land management