International corporations in an increasingly globalized economy exert a major influence on the planet's land use and resources through their product design and material sourcing decisions. Many companies use life cycle assessment (LCA) to evaluate their sustainability, yet commonly-used LCA methodologies lack the spatial resolution and predictive ecological information to reveal key impacts on climate, water and biodiversity. We present advances for LCA that integrate spatially explicit modelling of land change and ecosystem services in a Land-Use Change Improved (LUCI)-LCA. Comparing increased demand for bioplastics derived from two alternative feedstock-location scenarios for maize and sugarcane, we find that the LUCI-LCA approach yields results opposite to those of standard LCA for greenhouse gas emissions and water consumption, and of different magnitudes for soil erosion and biodiversity. This approach highlights the importance of including information about where and how land-use change and related impacts will occur in supply chain and innovation decisions.

With limited resources to improve the provision of multiple ecosystem services, conservation programs often rely on spatial tools to identify the best locations for restoration or protection. However, most programs still base prioritization on biophysical metrics that do not fully predict where interventions will deliver the greatest benefits to people. We argue that prioritization metrics need to consider not only biophysical data on the supply of ecosystem services but also socioeconomic data that highlight the value of those services. We use the example of prioritizing best management practices (BMPs) in an agricultural watershed in the US state of Iowa to evaluate how considering the location and preferences of beneficiaries affects the spatial prioritization of investments. We show that adopting metrics that incorporate endpoints of interest and value to people changes the spatial prioritization of BMPs, especially for air quality, lake recreation, and drinking water. Our work demonstrates how publicly available biophysical and social data can be integrated into spatial ecosystem services metrics to enhance the delivered benefits of conservation activities.

Abstract:Increasing demand for food and bioenergy has altered the global landscape dramatically in recent years. Land use and land cover change affects the environmental system in many ways through biophysical and biogeochemical mechanisms. In this study, we evaluate the impacts of land use and land cover change driven by recent crop expansion and conversion on the water budget, carbon exchange, and carbon storage in the Midwest USA. A dynamic global vegetation model was used to simulate and examine the impacts of landscape change in a historical case based on crop distribution data from the United States Department of Agriculture National Agricultural Statistics Services. The simulation results indicate that recent crop expansion not only decreased soil carbon sequestration (60 Tg less of soil organic carbon) and net carbon flux into ecosystems (3.7 Tg·year −1 less of net biome productivity), but also lessened water consumption through evapotranspiration (1.04 × 10 10 m 3 ·year −1 less) over 12 states in the Midwest. More water yield at the land surface does not necessarily make more water available for vegetation. Crop residue removal might also exacerbate the soil carbon loss.

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ABSTRACT. Ecosystem services (ES) have become an important focus of the conservation movement but have yet to be mainstreamed into environmental policy and management, especially at the state and federal levels. Adoption of an ES approach requires agency personnel to have knowledge or experience in implementing an ES approach and metrics that link potential actions to impacts on ES. We characterize the degree to which ES considerations are taken into account in setting priorities for conservation acquisitions in the U.S. state of Minnesota. We assess two core dimensions of an ES approach: (1) multiobjective targeting and (2) measuring program benefits in terms of increases in human well-being. We assess the degree to which these two dimensions occur in statute and in conservation program decision making. We find that state statute provides clear support for an ES approach in conservation funding mechanisms. However, we find that many of the programs funded through those mechanisms have more traditional habitat-centric approaches. In contrast to statutory emphasis, water quality related metrics were not prominent. We recommend expanding current prioritization systems to include a broader suite of metrics that are linked to human well-being to further mainstream ES in Minnesota. These metrics can be generated from existing data and would allow program managers to better communicate the public benefits of conservation spending.