Ecohydrological insight: Solar farms facilitate carbon sink enhancement in drylands

Chuandong Wu; Hu Liu; Yang Yu; Wenzhi Zhao; Li Guo; Jintao Liu; Omer Yetemen

doi:10.1016/j.jenvman.2023.118304

Ecohydrological insight: Solar farms facilitate carbon sink enhancement in drylands

J Environ Manage. 2023 Sep 15:342:118304. doi: 10.1016/j.jenvman.2023.118304. Epub 2023 Jun 3.

Authors

Chuandong Wu¹, Hu Liu², Yang Yu³, Wenzhi Zhao⁴, Li Guo⁵, Jintao Liu⁶, Omer Yetemen⁷

Affiliations

¹ Linze Inland River Basin Research Station, Chinese Ecosystem Research Network, Lanzhou, 730000, China; Northwest Institute of Eco-Environment and Resources, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lanzhou, 730000, China; University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100029, China.
² Linze Inland River Basin Research Station, Chinese Ecosystem Research Network, Lanzhou, 730000, China; Northwest Institute of Eco-Environment and Resources, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lanzhou, 730000, China; University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100029, China. Electronic address: lhayz@lzb.ac.cn.
³ School of Soil and Water Conservation, Beijing Forestry University, Beijing, 100038, China.
⁴ Linze Inland River Basin Research Station, Chinese Ecosystem Research Network, Lanzhou, 730000, China; Northwest Institute of Eco-Environment and Resources, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lanzhou, 730000, China.
⁵ State Key Laboratory of Hydraulics and Mountain River Engineering, Sichuan University, Chengdu, 610000, China.
⁶ State Key Laboratory of Hydrology-Water Resources & Hydraulic Engineering, Hohai University, Nanjing, 210098, China.
⁷ Eurasia Institute of Earth Sciences, Istanbul Technical University, Maslak, Istanbul, 34469, Turkey.

PMID: 37276619
DOI: 10.1016/j.jenvman.2023.118304

Abstract

Solar farms are critical to tackling climate change and achieving carbon neutrality. Besides producing renewable energy, a solar farm modifies microclimates and changes water distribution, consequently affecting local carbon sequestration capacity (CSC). Yet, how the CSC of an ecosystem responds to these changes after solar farm construction remains inadequately understood. Herein, the SOFAR model was adopted to reveal the effects of large-scale solar farms (LSFs) on CSC in arid northern China, with a series of numeric experiments along a climate gradient (with precipitation ranging from 70 to 500 mm yr^-1). The results show that relative to pristine vegetation background, CSC was non-linearly increased by averages of 3.49-6.68%, 4.43-10.25%, 5.07-9.71% and 5.6% each year after the installation of LSFs in hyper-arid climates (with aridity index or AI = 0.04-0.05), arid climates (AI = 0.14-0.16), semi-arid climates (AI = 0.21-0.3) and semi-humid climates (AI = 0.55), respectively. The increase in available water for plants growing under the drip lines of photovoltaic panels (PVs) in LSFs is confirmed to be the overwhelming factor responsible for CSC enhancement. Although biases remain in the estimation of increased CSC in hyper- and semi-humid regions due to the high variability of climate (e.g., extreme drought events) and serious radiation reduction beneath PVs, it is certain that solar farms facilitate CSC without increasing external land use. These results will deepen our understanding of the feedback between solar farms and ambient environments and be meaningful for vegetation management in solar farms, especially in the context of climate change and carbon neutrality aims.

Keywords: Carbon sequestration capacity; Drylands; Large-scale solar farms; Photovoltaic panels; Vegetation.

MeSH terms

Carbon
Carbon Sequestration*
Climate Change
Ecosystem*
Farms
Water

Substances

Water
Carbon