Abstract: In order to explore the research status, hotspots and trends of river habitat status assessment, Citespace bibliometric tool was used to visualize the publication volume, countries/institutions, authors and keywords in the field of river habitat status assessment from 2004 to 2023, by the Web of Science (WOS) database as the data source． The results of publication volume indicate that the United States occupies a dominant position in terms of number of publication volume, countries/institutions and authors; China started late in research in this field, but its contribution is on the rise and it occupies an important position． The results of keyword clustering analysis indicate that the current research hotspots in this field are three aspects: “River habitat suitability assessment”, “River habitat simulation” and “River habitat restoration”． And combined with relevant keywords, a systematic review of each aspect was conducted. The analysis of keyword emergence shows that the research trends of river habitat status assessment can be summarized as “the impact of hydropower development on river habitat status”, “river habitat status assessment at the watershed scale” and “the relationship between river habitat status and ecological service function”．