Abstract
Environmental
impacts caused by land occupation and transformation have been bypassed in many
LCA studies due to soils’ multifunctionality and the interconnectedness between
the ecosystem services they provide. These inherent modelling complexities have
traditionally forced LCA practitioners to content with a mere quantification of
Land Use (LU), as surface area and duration (in m2 or ha and years)
appropriated by humans, without further analysis of the impact pathways derived
from those land uses. Milà i Canals established the first comprehensive, basic
framework for taking soil quality aspect into LCIA that reached acceptance
among the LCA community. Through contributions from UNEP-SETAC’s special task
force on LU, great progress has ensued in developing further such LCIA. Building
on the latest proposal by Koellner et al. and with the aim of bringing the
Planetary Boundaries thinking into LCA, the present study proposes a single
absolute scale for the midpoint impact category (MIC) of Biotic Production
Potential (BPP). It is
hypothesized that, for an ecosystem in equilibrium (where NPP equals decay),
such an ecosystem has reached the maximum biotic throughput subject to
site-specific conditions and no externally added inputs. The
original ecosystem (or Potential Natural Vegetation) of a certain land gives then
the maximum BPP with no
additional, downstream or upstream, impacts. This Natural BPP is proposed as the maximum BPP in a
hypothetical Absolute Scale for LCA’s Land Use framework. It is argued that
this maximum BPP is Nature’s optimal solution through evolution-adaptation
mechanisms, which provides the maximum matter throughput subject to the rest of
environmental constraints (without further impacts). As a consequence, this
scale rises a Land Use Optimality Point that
suggests the existence of a limit regarding the
maximization of divergent objectives with bioenergy. It will be attempted to
model that beyond this point, and for the land available within a country, if the
objective of Climate Change mitigation through bioenergy is further maximized,
then the Fossil Fuel displacing objective will decrease, and vice versa.
Original language | English |
---|---|
Publication date | 2016 |
Number of pages | 1 |
Publication status | Published - 2016 |
Event | SETAC Europe 26th Annual Meeting: Environmental contaminants from land to sea: continuities and interface in environmental toxicology and chemistry - La Cite Nantes Congress Center, Nantes, France Duration: 22 May 2016 → 26 May 2016 Conference number: 22 http://nantes.setac.eu/nantes/home//?contentid=851 |
Conference
Conference | SETAC Europe 26th Annual Meeting |
---|---|
Number | 22 |
Location | La Cite Nantes Congress Center |
Country/Territory | France |
City | Nantes |
Period | 22/05/2016 → 26/05/2016 |
Internet address |