With the acceleration of urbanization a nd industrialization, water pollution is becoming more and more serious. Because the technologies of traditional wastewater treatment have limited efficiency of pollutant removal, such as nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P), heavy metals, antibiotics, and microplastics, the performance of wetland in pollution removal has become a research hotspot. However, there are few summaries of development trend and regional distribution of the performance of wetland in pollutionremoval. In thisstudy, VOSviewer software and the R package “bibliometrix” were used to systematically visualize literatures on the performance of wetland in pollution removal in the Web of Science Core Collection ( WoSCC) . The results of our bibliometric analysis revealed a significant increase in annual publications, with the output in Phase II (2010–2023) being 5.5 times that of Phase I (1995–2009). Research hotspots have evolved from an initial focus on nutrient (N, P) and heavy metal removal in Constructed wetlands (CWs) to a recent emphasis on emerging contaminants (ECs) remediation. A regional analysis indicated that Asia accounted for 73.8% of the studies in 2023, with China being the dominant contributor. While CWs constituted the majority (56%) of studied wetland systems in 2023, natural wetlands received substantial attention (41%), highlighting their significant pollutant removal capabilities and ecological benefits. This review synthesizes the key factors influencing pollutant removal in CWs and discusses the inherent advantages of natural wetlands, concluding with an outlook on future challenges and the potential for intelligent wetland development. This study provides insights and a systematic overview that can inform the optimization of wetland technologies for pollutant removal and help identify future research directions.
Zhuo et al. (Sat,) studied this question.