Ecohydrology, studying the interactions between hydrological and ecological processes, has become one of most active frontiers in both fields of hydrology and ecology. Coupled water-energy balance (CWEB) at the catchment scale and its responses to changes in climate and land surface conditions are important research area in the interdisciplinary field of eco-hydrology. In this study a bibliometric analysis was conduct to assess current status and future developments in the research area of CWEB. All research papers on the CWEB at the catchment scale published over the period of 1992-2015 were retrieved from the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) database and analyzed by means of TDA (Thomson Data Analyzer), Ucinet and Netdraw. Results of the bibliometric analysis shown that:(1) the number of publications has increased greatly in the past 24 years. Research on the CWEB can be classified into three stages in terms of the number of papers published every year, research subjects and cooperation features, i.e. groping & low yield stage, expansion stage and active & high yield stage. (2) Core themes of the research are climate change, runoff, water balance, hydrological modelling, land use and land cover change, etc. The application of remote sensing and GIS technology has been continuously strengthened. More and more attentions have been paid to the study of hydrological effects of human activities and their temporal variability. (3) High impact publications were largely from Australia and American. There was a significant increase in publications from China in term of both quantity and quality. (4) The extent of international cooperation was expanding. In the past 10 years, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Tsinghua University and many other institutions in China have gradually strengthened the cooperation with a number of international scientific and educational institutions and have made great progresses in the research area of CWEB.