Objective  Under the background of China’s “Carbon Peaking and Carbon Neutrality” policy, wind power has become the third largest power source after thermal power and hydropower. It is not difficult to predict that renewable energy facilities, such as wind turbines will increasingly appear in urban and rural landscape, which will bring many research tasks under the framework of “renewable energy landscape” to the field of landscape architecture. A scientific and systematic understanding of the site layout characteristics and types of wind-power landscape in China can provide basic and theoretical support for subsequent related research.

Methods  This research takes the onshore wind-power landscape of China in 2020 as the research object, proposes the framework of “layout elements of wind-power landscape”, and analyses the site layout characteristics of wind-power landscape in China based on the three elements of nature, functional equipment and human-land practice by such methods as Getis-Ord General G spatial autocorrelation analysis, and multiple ring buffer analysis. Following a top-down multi-level classification approach, the research selects the four landscape character factors of terrain and geomorphic features, surrounding landscape types, land use types and environmental conditions as classification criteria to systematically classify the types of wind-power landscape in China.

Results  The results show that: 1) The site layout of wind-power landscape is characterized by diversification and regional distribution. As to natural elements, the elevation distribution belongs to low value aggregation, while the slope and aspect distribution belong to high value aggregation. As to functional equipment elements, wind turbine forms with obvious landscape layout characteristics can be summarized into five types: linear type, dominant linear type, grid type, matrix type, and plum-blossom type. As to human-land practice elements, it has been found that the noise, light and shadow safety protection regulations for some wind-power projects need to be strengthened. 2) Wind-power landscape can be divided into 7 categories such as mountain and coast wind-power landscape and 26 subcategories such as mountainous arable land and coastal forest land wind-power landscape. The proportion of the 7 categories of landscape can be ranked as follow: III mountain wind-power landscape > I plain wind-power landscape > II hilly wind-power landscape > V coast wind-power landscape > VI riverside and lakeside wind-power landscape > IV plateau wind-power landscape > VII urban wind-power landscape. Among them, the total number of mountain and plain wind-power landscape accounts for 63.7%, forming the “foundation” of China’s wind-power landscape. Each wind-power landscape category presents an arched and banded interweaving pattern spatially. The northern plain wind-power landscape extension zone stretches and transitions to the south, blending with hilly and plateau wind-power landscape groups. The development zones of mountain wind-power landscape are mainly distributed in the southwest and central China regions, and the basal zone of coast wind-power landscape is in the southern region. Across the country, the mountain wind-power landscape, hilly wind-power landscape, plain wind-power landscape and coast wind-power landscape are distributed from west to east in sequence, which is corresponding to the “three steps” elevation change in China. The riverside and lakeside wind-power landscape and urban wind-power landscape are distributed in varying degrees of dispersion.

Conclusion  Based on the above research results, three future research directions are proposed: mechanism and impact research based on wind-power landscape layout elements, evaluation and comparative research based on wind-power landscape types, and wind-power landscape evaluation standards and technical specifications. This research fills the gap in the framework of basic research on wind-power landscape in China to some extent, and expands the research boundary of wind-power landscape as a cultural landscape. The research results can provide a basis for scientific and systematic understanding of the classification and distribution characteristics of wind-power landscape in China, and a reference for the protection of natural landscape resources and the planning and design of wind-power landscape under the background of rapid wind-power development in the future.