How does deforestation for data centres affect forests and local environments?

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1. 1

   Global impacts of transportation infrastructure on forest degradation and loss

   Nature Communications (Zhou et al.)Published Feb 4, 2026Checked Oct 6, 2026

   “Impacts extend up to 5 km with a clear distance decay effect, totaling 4.26 million km2 of forest loss—equivalent to 10.7% of the 2020 global forest extent. The Global South (tropics accounting for 54.8%) faces severe, worsening degradation (2000–2020), while the Global North shows milder impacts, with partial recovery. Critically, 89% of grid cells exhibit conflicting long-term trends across metrics, highlighting the inadequacy of cover-only assessments. We further find that road-linked degradation is tightly coupled with local human activity, and that global protected areas have insufficient capacity to curb ongoing degradation. Differences in impacts among regions suggest that road-linked forest degradation is tied to governance choices—urging integrated transport-forest planning to balance development and conservation. Transportation infrastructure threatens forests, but past studies have been regional or focused on single metrics like forest cover. This global analysis finds road-adjacent forests lose cover, height, and productivity and become more fragmented.”

2. 2

   Mapping global resource driven nature loss in the mining sector from 2001 to 2022.

   Nature communications (Cheng et al.)Published May 28, 2026Checked Oct 6, 2026

   “Here, we introduce a novel approach integrating remote sensing, machine learning, and cloud computing to classify approximately 70,000 mining sites by commodity. Using this newly detailed dataset, we quantify the nature loss associated with 20 extracted commodities, focusing on deforestation and habitat destruction. From 2001 to 2022, mining activities worldwide resulted in the removal of 16,268 km² of forest cover, with 65.64% occurring in tropical and subtropical regions. Notably, approximately half of this deforestation was attributed to the extraction of gold, coal, aluminium (bauxite), nickel-cobalt and copper, primarily in countries intersecting the Amazon, Southeast Asian, and Congo Basin rainforests. Our analysis also reveals that deforestation-to-mining area ratios and biodiversity risks vary by mining location, and conservation threats do not always scale with deforestation rates. By providing commodity-specific maps of mining-induced nature loss, our work equips companies and organisations with actionable insights to identify risks within their supply chains and implement targeted mitigation strategies.”

3. 3

   Mining triggers extensive additional deforestation in sub-Saharan Africa.

   Nature (Morton et al.)Published Jun 3, 2026Checked Oct 6, 2026

   “In total, we find 187,000 hectares of direct mining-driven deforestation, that is, deforestation due to features directly associated with mining operations, such as pits, tailing ponds and spoil heaps. We estimate that mining also triggers an additional 8.0 percentage points (pp; 95% confidence interval (CI): 7.2-8.9 pp) increase in deforestation within 1 km of a mine compared with unmined areas. Increased levels of deforestation (1.1 pp, 95% CI: 0.7-1.5) persist up to 20 km from mines even after ten years. For every hectare of direct deforestation due to the mine footprint, mining triggers, on average, 34 hectares of additional offsite loss within five years through ancillary activities, including agriculture and settlements. Mines extracting cobalt and copper-key energy transition minerals-caused the highest amount of additional deforestation. Embedding offsite deforestation levels into environmental impact assessments for new mining projects will be key to ensuring zero-deforestation or no-net-loss supply chains for critical minerals and reduce future mining-driven forest losses in sub-Saharan Africa.”

4. 4

   Flexibility-aware framework for efficient planner-initiated siting of data center.

   Nature communications (Kim et al.)Published May 16, 2026Checked Oct 6, 2026

   “Applied to a synthetic 2000-bus Texas power system, the framework demonstrates that operational flexibility expands the siting frontier by 9-17% at 1 GW and 19-21% at 2 GW compared to firm operation. Median all-hour average prices remain essentially unchanged ($24.32/MWh for the 2 GW cases), and the shift envelope attenuates peak-hour price dispersion by approximately 3.4% with minimal side effects during off-peak hours. Utilizing pre-certified envelopes to bypass major transmission reinforcements, this workflow enables first energization in 12-18 months-a conservative reduction of 3.5-4 years versus the conventional 5-8 year project-led process. This technology-agnostic framework provides a proactive decision-making tool for system operators and regulators to fast-track large flexible loads while preserving grid reliability and market stability.”