ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Environ. Sci.
Sec. Environmental Economics and Management
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fenvs.2025.1660435
This article is part of the Research TopicQuantifying the Ecosystem Impacts of Energy SystemsView all articles
Biodiversity impacts of land use by fossil fuel extraction in China
Provisionally accepted
- Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang, China
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Human-dominated land use is a major driver of biodiversity loss. The largescale extraction of fossil fuels provides essential materials for social and economic development. However, its biodiversity impacts have not been fully understood. Here, we investigate the biodiversity impacts of land use driven by fossil-fuel extraction (coal, oil, and gas) in China based on a spatially explicit inventory of 1207 coal mines, 974 oil fields, and 1332 gas fields. The results show that the total land occupied by fossil fuel extraction in China is 2317 km 2 , of which coal mines account for 53.6%. We find that fossil fuel extraction has resulted in potential species loss of 1.6×10 -2 terrestrial vertebrates and 3.2×10 -2 terrestrial plants through land use. Per-joule biodiversity impact of oil and gas is 4.5 times that of coal. The interregional displacement of biodiversity impacts (vertebrates and plants) induced by fossil fuel trade is 1.8×10 -2 , with vertebrate impact of 1.0×10 -2 and plant impact of 8.0×10 -3 . From a sectoral perspective, the construction sector leads to the largest biodiversity impacts due to its consumption of considerable petroleum, electricity, and metal products. Biodiversity impacts need to be incorporated into energy planning as a key ecological indicator to mitigate the biodiversity impacts of fossil fuel extraction. Meanwhile, we should pay more attention to the inequalities in biodiversity impacts across regions caused by fossil fuel trade to advance biodiversity protection.
Keywords: Biodiversity, land use, Fossil fuel, Energy, Input-output model
Received: 06 Jul 2025; Accepted: 24 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 He, Zheng and Yang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Jialiang Yang, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang, China
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