Background Soil erosion is one of the major global environmental issues. As one of the core contents of soil erosion research, the source of sediment in watersheds has received widespread attention and research. The identification of sediment sources has an important role and significance for the analysis of the temporal and spatial distribution characteristics of soil erosion and the benefit evaluation of soil and water conservation measures. Fingerprint recognition technology has been developing for many years, and various research methods have emerged in an endless stream. Understanding the development process of research and cutting-edge hotspots has become an important prerequisite for technological development.

Methods To grasp the frontiers and application hotspots of fingerprint identification of sediment sources at home and abroad, mathematical statistics and bibliometric methods were used to analyze the journal papers published in the field of fingerprint identification of sediment sources for 30 years from 1991 to 2021, based on the core papers of Web of Science and CNKI database, CiteSpace software.

Results The fingerprint technology to identify the source of sediment has started to grow rapidly since 1997, reached a high fever period in 2013-2019, and reached a peak of 150 articles in 2019. China, the United States, and the United Kingdom were the main research countries at this stage. The cumulative number of papers published by the three was more than 60% of the total number of statistics. China accounted for 19.2%, the United States accounts for 23.88%, and the United Kingdom accounts for 20.85%. In particular, the United States accounted for 32.67% of the highly cited papers selected. The United Kingdom, France, and Germany were pioneers in the study of fingerprint identification of the source of sediment. In terms of cooperative research, the U.S. Geological Survey has close cooperative ties with four major global centers (Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lausanne Research Institute, Spanish Research Council, and the University of Paris-Saclay). The research mainly was involved the three fields of environment, ecology, and geology. The specific research content was the selection of fingerprint factors, the analysis method of evaluating and judging the contribution rate of sediment, and the research area was mainly concentrated in the watershed near the agricultural area. The current research frontiers in this field were the consideration of uncertainty (identification and classification of potential sources, sample collection, variation of fingerprint properties, etc.), and the improvement of analytical models.

Conclusions The current research frontiers in this field are the consideration of uncertainties (identification and classification of potential sources, sample collection, variation of fingerprint properties, etc.), further improvement of fingerprint factors, diverse regions and larger watershed scales, and transformation to practical tools cutting edge research will be broader in scale, the research perspective will be more thorough and in-depth, and the accuracy of the research data will be higher and more accurate. How to reduce the cost of this method is also one of the key research directions in the future.