[Natural science research in Changbai Mountain during 1956-2018:A review.]

We synthesized the scientific research carried out in Changbai Mountain from 1956 to 2018 by mapping knowledge domains and bibliometrics based on the literature from international database (WOS) and domestic databases (CNKI and CSCD). The results showed that natural science research in Changbai Mountain underwent three stages during 1956-2018, including embryo stage, growing stage, and rapid development stage. The natural research in Changbai Mountain could be divided into five fields, i.e., forest and ecological science, volcano and geology science, environmental change science, resource sciences and utilization, animal and microbial science, with a total of 20 main research directions. Since 2000, forest and ecological science, volcano and geological science, environmental change science dominated the natural science research in Changbai Mountain. The researches in recent 20 years mainly concentrated on the following seven disciplines: community ecology, forest management, soil ecology, ecosystem ecology, eco-climatology, forest responses to environmental change, and volcanic geology. International researches showed a trend of strong integration of different disciplines. We forecast that the natural science research in the Changbai Mountain would deepen its research in the next decade. Moreover, other fields such as old-growth forest and large-scale ecosystem carbon processes, forest-altitude-climate change, soil fauna and microorganisms, forest management and human activities, biodiversity, volcanic origin and eruption history, volcanic eruption dynamics and volcanic monitoring will emerge as the new research focus. Scale polarization, elements diversification, discipline crossing, and research deepening would be the future trend of natural science research in Changbai Mountain.