Spatiotemporal Characteristics of Carbon Emissions from Construction Land and Their Decoupling Effects in the Yellow River Basin, China

Carbon emissions (CE) from expanding construction land (CL), a vital territory for human production and habitation, have contributed to climate change worldwide. The Yellow River Basin (YRB), an essential economic region and energy supply base in China, is experiencing rapid urbanization, and the contradiction between economic development and ecological protection is increasingly acute. Consequently, a thorough examination of the spatial and temporal change features of carbon emissions from construction land (CECL) and its decoupling from economic growth (EG) is crucial for the maintaining development of the region. This study adopts the IPCC carbon emission coefficient approach for measuring the CECL in the YRB from 2010 to 2021. The temporal and spatial variation features of CECL in the YRB were revealed using ArcGIS software and the standard deviation ellipse (SDE) model. The decoupling effect between CECL and EG was analyzed using the Tapio decoupling model and innovatively combined with the Logarithmic Mean Divisia Index (LMDI) method to explore the influence of five main drivers on the decoupling effect. This study found that: (1) The CECL rose from 2.463 billion tons in 2010 to 3.329 billion tons in 2021. The spatial layout of CECL is “high in the east and low in the west”. (2) The SDE of CECL is distributed in the direction of “northeast to southwest”, and the gravity center’s moving path is “northwest to northeast to northwest”; (3) weak decoupling (WD) is the main decoupling state between CECL and EG; (4) the economic output effect and the construction land (CL) scale effect are the two main factors inhibiting the decoupling of CECL, while the energy intensity effect, the population density effect, and the energy structure effect are the main elements motivating the decoupling of CECL. This study provides specific references and bases for the YRB in China and other countries and regions with similar levels of development in promoting green and ecologically friendly initiatives and achieving low-carbon utilization of regional land and sustainable development.