Land use impacts on freshwater regulation, erosion regulation, and water purification: a spatial approach for a global s
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GLOBAL LAND USE IMPACTS ON BIODIVERSITY AND ECOSYSTEM SERVICES IN LCA
Land use impacts on freshwater regulation, erosion regulation, and water purification: a spatial approach for a global scale level Rosie Saad & Thomas Koellner & Manuele Margni
Received: 24 May 2012 / Accepted: 1 April 2013 / Published online: 24 April 2013 # Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2013
Abstract Purpose Rarely considered in environmental assessment methods, potential land use impacts on a series of ecosystem services must be accounted for in widely used decisionmaking tools such as life cycle assessment (LCA). The main goal of this study is to provide an operational life cycle impact assessment characterization method that addresses land use impacts at a global scale by developing spatially differentiated characterization factors (CFs) and assessing the extent of their spatial variability using different regionalization levels. Methods The proposed method follows the recommendations of previous work and falls within the framework and principles for land use impact assessment established by the United Nations Environment Programme/Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry Life Cycle Initiative. Based on the spatial approach suggested by Saad et al. (Int J Life Cycle Assess 16: 198–211, 2011), the intended impact pathways that are modeled pertain to impacts on ecosystem services damage potential and focus on three major ecosystem services: (1) erosion regulation potential, (2) freshwater regulation potential, and (3) water purification potential. Spatially-
Responsible editor: Roland Geyer Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s11367-013-0577-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. R. Saad (*) : M. Margni CIRAIG, Chemical Engineering Department, École Polytechnique de Montréal, P.O. Box 6079, Montréal, QC H3C 3A7, Canada e-mail: [email protected] T. Koellner Faculty of Biology, Chemistry and Geosciences, Professorship of Ecological Services PES, University of Bayreuth, 95440 Bayreuth, Germany
differentiated CFs were calculated for each biogeographic region of all three regionalization scale (Holdridge life regions, Holdridge life zones, and terrestrial biomes) along with a nonspatial world average level. In addition, seven land use types were assessed considering both land occupation and land transformation interventions. Results and discussion A comprehensive analysis of the results indicates that, when compared to all resolution schemes, the world generic averaged CF can deviate for various ecosystem types. In the case of groundwater recharge potential impacts, this range varied up to factors of 7, 4.7, and 3 when using the Holdridge life zones, the Holdridge regions, and the terrestrial biomes regionalization levels, respectively. This validates the importance of introducing a regionalized assessment and highlights how a finer scale increases the level of detail and consequently the discriminating power across several biogeographic regions, wh
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