Bibliometric Review on the Use of Internet of Things Technologies to Monitor the Impacts of Wind on Trees and Forests

The presence of trees brings several health benefits to urban populations. However, wind damage is an important cause of falling trees, causing considerable damages. This study involved a bibliometric review on the use of Internet of Things technologies for monitoring trees. A research protocol was designed and implemented, involving a thorough search of the Scopus database. After applying the exclusion criteria and content filters, the abstracts and titles of the resulting 313 documents were analyzed. Two analyses were performed; (i) an analysis of the evolution of the area based on the study metadata; (ii) a cluster analysis of the words present in the abstracts and titles of the identified documents. The first analysis showed: (i) the current growth of this area of research; (ii) that the most important fields of study were agricultural, biological, environmental, and terrestrial and planetary sciences; (iii) that the most relevant journal was Ecology and Forest Management. The second analysis resulted in the identification of three clusters: (i) wind impact; (ii) variables and experiments; (iii) forest management. The main gap observed was that few studies have used IoT technologies as tools for preventive or corrective actions related to wind and storm impacts on trees and forests.