Abstract: tA great progress has been achieved in ecological stoichiometry since the first paper published in 2003. Based on the articles collected by the core journals of China national knowledge infrastructure (CNKI) and Web of Science with Chinese ecological stoichiometry during 2003-2016, the reference relationship and knowledge maps of the papers have been analyzed by Citespace III, and to further discuss the hotspots and developing trends of Chinese ecological stoichiometry. The results showed that the study of Chinese ecological stoichiometry is focused on ecological stoichiometry, carbon-nitrogen ratio, soil nutrient and organic carbon and nitrogen deposition, and has achieved abundant achievement. Wang, Zeng and Tong have published a large number of research papers on ecological stoichiometry. Many Chinese academy of sciences and universities have deeply studied and explored in the area of evergreen broad-leaved forest, desert steppe, the Loess Plateau and Minjiang estuary of China, such as the Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Fujian Normal University and Northwest Agriculture and Forestry University of Science and Technology. Meanwhile, the University of Arizona and University of Georgia have paid considerable attention to the stoichiometry in Chinese ecological regions. Meanwhile, with new research methods and techniques, the research on elements circulation and limit factors of the terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems gains a lot of attention and becomes a hotspot in research field under the continued support of the National Natural Science Foundation (NSFC). So far the domestic research area has extended to the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau alpine meadow, tropical and subtropical broad-leaved forest and other areas, still in the terrestrial ecosystem. But the international concern is more aquatic ecosystems such as "fresh water", "climate" "nutrient limitation" and other related research, Henceforth, eco-chemical metrology research will focus on climate change and nutrient dynamic balance model, nutrient elements (K, Na, Ca, S) on the ecological chemical measurement and gene effects and other aspects of research.

Key words: ecological chemistry metrology, literature citation network, keyword co-occurrence network, visualization, Citespace Ⅲ