Desert regions represent some of the most climatically fragile environments, yet their research landscape in India remains uneven and weakly mapped. This study provides a comprehensive scientometric analysis of a total of 4,439 documents on desert-related scholarship in India using two major global databases—Scopus (n = 2,653) and Web of Science (WoS) (n = 1,786). The objective is to identify publication trends, thematic concentrations, dominant contributors, and anomalies that reveal critical research gaps and emerging opportunities. Analysis of WoS data shows that research output peaked as late as 2022, followed by a noticeable decline, indicating fluctuating long-term engagement with desert issues. Climate Action (SDG 13) emerged as the most strongly aligned Sustainable Development Goal, reflecting the increasing relevance of desert studies within climate-change discourse. Publications were most frequently classified under Geosciences Multidisciplinary, suggesting a broad but non-specialised engagement with desert environments. Scopus results similarly reveal oscillating publication activity, with a decline around 2019 and a sharp rise peaking in 2023. Environmental Sciences forms the dominant disciplinary cluster, while the Indian institutions appear as the most prolific institutional contributors. Keyword co-occurrence networks from both databases highlight the overwhelming dominance of “India,” “desert,” “Thar Desert,” “Rajasthan,” “soil,” “desert climate,” and “dust,” indicating a strong regional and thematic bias. The prominence of terms such as remote sensing, landforms, aerosol, climate change, and monsoon underscores growing attention to climate and desert interactions. However, the scarcity of keywords related to socio-economic systems, groundwater dynamics, biodiversity, and cold-desert environments reveals notable research gaps. The study concludes that while India demonstrates strong output in arid-region research, thematic imbalance, regional concentration in the Thar Desert, and fluctuating long-term publication trends signify critical anomalies. Addressing these gaps is essential for strengthening India’s desert resilience and aligning future research with broader environmental and developmental priorities. It is the first bibliometric attempt which tends to examine the research field on desert ecosystem in India.
Priyanka Puri (Thu,) studied this question.