National assessment reveals widespread wind farm impacts on land surface temperature and vegetation in China

Ziyan Li; Yan Li; Yingzuo Qin; Laibao Liu; Eviatar Bach; Alona Armstrong; Guoqing Li; Mingquan Li; Zheng Wang; Yongqing Bai; Zhengchao Chen

doi:10.1016/j.geosus.2026.100460

Geography and Sustainability ›› 2026, Vol. 7 ›› Issue (3) :100460 DOI: 10.1016/j.geosus.2026.100460

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National assessment reveals widespread wind farm impacts on land surface temperature and vegetation in China

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^a State Key Laboratory of Earth Surface Processes and Hazards Risk Governance, Faculty of Geographical Science, Beijing Normal University , Beijing 100875, China

^b Institute of Land Surface System and Sustainable Development, Faculty of Geographical Science , Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China

^c School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Southern University of Science and Technology , Shenzhen 518055, China

^d Department of Geography, The University of Hong Kong , Hong Kong 999077, China

^e Institute for Climate and Carbon Neutrality, The University of Hong Kong , Hong Kong 999077, China

^f Department of Meteorology and Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Reading , Reading, United Kingdom

^g National Centre for Earth Observation , Reading, United Kingdom

^h Lancaster Environment Centre, Lancaster University , Lancaster LA14YQ, United Kingdom

ⁱ Energy Lancaster, Lancaster University , Lancaster LA14YW, United Kingdom

^j School of Resources and Environmental Engineering, Ludong University , Yantai 264025, China

^k School of Economics and Management, Beihang University , Beijing 100191, China

^lMOE Laboratory for Low-carbon Intelligent Governance (LLIG), Beihang University , Beijing 100191, China

^m Bay Area International Business School, Beijing Normal University at Zhuhai , Zhuhai 519087, China

ⁿHarvard-China Project on Energy, Economy and Environment, Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences , Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, 02138, USA

^o State Key Laboratory of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth, Aerospace Information Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences , Beijing 100101, China

^* E-mail address: yanli.geo@gmail.com (Y. Li).

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Abstract

The rapid development of wind energy in China since 2000 has raised concerns about its impacts on local climate and vegetation. Despite regional and local studies, a comprehensive national assessment is lacking. Here, we analyzed the effects of 675 onshore wind farms, representing > 90,000 identified wind turbines in China, on land surface temperature (LST) and vegetation using Moderate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) satellite data from 2003 to 2022. We found a daytime cooling effect of -0.05 ± 0.48 °C (mean ± STD) and a nighttime warming effect of 0.06 ± 0.28 °C across all wind farms. The construction of wind farm infrastructure initially reduced peak normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) by -0.006 ± 0.036, and this adverse impact weakened over time (-0.004 after 7 years), indicating vegetation recovery. The wind farm impacts varied by land cover type. The nighttime warming was largest for barren lands (0.19 °C), followed by croplands (0.10 °C), grasslands (0.07 °C), and forests (0.01 °C). These differences contributed to increasing night warming from southern to northern China. The adverse vegetation impacts were largest for forests (-0.010), followed by grasslands (-0.008) and barren lands (-0.003), with croplands (0.001) being almost unaffected. Correlation analysis identified precipitation and mean LST as significant factors influencing spatial variations in nighttime LST impact, with greater vegetation decline reinforcing night warming. Our large-scale analysis provides comprehensive evidence of the heterogeneous environmental impacts of wind farms across China, informing the sustainable development of wind energy.

Keywords

Wind farm / LST / Vegetation / Land cover / NDVI / Environmental impact

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Ziyan Li, Yan Li, Yingzuo Qin, Laibao Liu, Eviatar Bach, Alona Armstrong, Guoqing Li, Mingquan Li, Zheng Wang, Yongqing Bai, Zhengchao Chen. National assessment reveals widespread wind farm impacts on land surface temperature and vegetation in China. Geography and Sustainability, 2026, 7 (3) : 100460 DOI:10.1016/j.geosus.2026.100460

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Data availability statement

All data used in this study are publicly available except wind turbine location data. The detailed information of 675 wind farms used in this analysis and their impact summary can be found in the supplementary file Table_S1.xlsx. The code and data that support the findings of this study are openly available at Figshare (https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.30951173).

Declaration of competing interests

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper. Yan Li is an Editorial Board Member for this journal and was not involved in the editorial review or the decision to publish this article.

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Ziyan Li: Writing – original draft, Visualization, Validation, Software, Methodology, Formal analysis. Yan Li: Writing – review & editing, Resources, Methodology, Funding acquisition, Conceptualization. Yingzuo Qin: Writing – review & editing, Software, Methodology. Laibao Liu: Writing – review & editing. Eviatar Bach: Writing – review & editing. Alona Armstrong: Writing – review & editing. Guoqing Li: Writing – review & editing. Mingquan Li: Writing – review & editing. Zheng Wang: Writing – review & editing. Yongqing Bai: Data curation. Zhengchao Chen: Data curation.

Acknowledgements

This study is supported by the National Key R&D Program of China (Grant No. 2024YFF0811100), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 41901115), and the 111 Project of China (Grant No. B23027). We thank Yuehan Yu for her help with the graphical abstract and proofreading.

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