Biodiversity and life support impacts of land use in LCA

Lindeijer, Erwin

doi:10.1016/s0959-6526(00)00025-1

Cited by 83 publications

(76 citation statements)

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“…It also depends on the impact type as well as the ecosystem function or taxonomic group considered (Jones and Schmitz 2009). To take this into consideration, data based on altitude and latitude made for regeneration of biomass after land has been cleared, assuming no soil degradation are provided in (van Dobben in Lindeijer et al 1998, Annex 1.23). These numbers can be used as proxies to estimate regeneration of cleared land in different biomes or ecoregions, by calculating an area weighted average per region (depending on the share of total land within different altitudinal and latitudinal classes).…”

Section: Regeneration Timementioning

confidence: 99%

UNEP-SETAC guideline on global land use impact assessment on biodiversity and ecosystem services in LCA

Koellner

Baan

Beck

et al. 2013

Int J Life Cycle Assess

290

292

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Purpose As a consequence of the multi-functionality of land, the impact assessment of land use in Life Cycle Impact Assessment requires the modelling of several impact pathways covering biodiversity and ecosystem services. To provide consistency amongst these separate impact pathways, general principles for their modelling are provided in this paper. These are refinements to the principles that have already been proposed in publications by the UNEP-SETAC Life Cycle Initiative. In particular, this paper addresses the calculation of land use interventions and land use impacts, the issue of impact reversibility, the spatial and temporal distribution of such impacts and the assessment of absolute or relative ecosystem quality changes. Based on this, we propose a guideline to build methods for land use impact assessment in Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). Results Recommendations are given for the development of new characterization models and for which a series of key elements should explicitly be stated, such as the modelled land use impact pathways, the land use/cover typology covered, the level of biogeographical differentiation used for the characterization factors, the reference land use situation used and if relative or absolute quality changes are used to calculate land use impacts. Moreover, for an application of the characterisation factors (CFs) in an LCA study, data collection should be transparent with respect to the data input required from the land use inventory and the regeneration times. Indications on how generic CFs can be used for the background system as well as how spatial-based CFs can be calculated for the foreground system in a specific LCA study and how land use change is to be allocated should be detailed. Finally, it becomes necessary to justify the modelling period for which land use impacts of land transformation and occupation are calculated and how uncertainty is accounted for. Discussion The presented guideline is based on a number of assumptions: Discrete land use types are sufficient for an assessment of land use impacts; ecosystem quality remains constant over time of occupation; time and area of occupation are substitutable; transformation time is negligible; regeneration is linear and independent from land use history and landscape configuration; biodiversity and multiple ecosystem services are independent; the ecological impact is linearly increasing with the intervention; and there is no interaction between land use and other drivers such as climate change. These assumptions might influence the results of land use Life Cycle Impact Assessment and need to be critically reflected. Conclusions and recommendations In this and the other papers of the special issue, we presented the principles and recommendations for the calculation of land use impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem services on a global scale. In the framework of LCA, they are mainly used for the assessment of land use impacts in the background system. The main areas for further development are the link to regional...

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Section: Regeneration Timementioning

confidence: 99%

UNEP-SETAC guideline on global land use impact assessment on biodiversity and ecosystem services in LCA

Koellner

Baan

Beck

et al. 2013

Int J Life Cycle Assess

290

292

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“…Köllner [68] briefly argues that the occurrence of species can be considered as a proxy for ecological value in terms of sustaining ecological functions and services and consequently argues that all species should be equally weighted. Müller-Wenk [96] argues in the same direction, while, e.g., Lindeijer [69], Schmidt [85] and de Baan et al [91] have a more pragmatic approach and acknowledge that the presence of a species is the best available dataset.…”

Section: Species Diversity As a Proxy For Biodiversitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Exceptions to this are the proposals from Lindeijer [69], Weidema and Lindeijer [117], Schmidt [85] and de Baan et al [92], who focus on the absolute number of species. Furthermore, de Baan et al [95] indirectly focus on the absolute number of species through their use of habitat suitability models.…”

Section: Absolute or Relative Changesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This choice could be related to the diversity-stability hypothesis; species-rich ecosystems are more stable, but this is not mentioned in any of the proposals using absolute changes. Lindeijer [69] argues that local biodiversity expresses the intrinsic value of a region, and Schmidt [85] suggests a link between the number of species and evolutionary age and that areas with a longer evolutionary time should be given higher scores on biodiversity value. Vogtländer et al [72] argue that the main issue is to preserve "valuable" species, and that a higher quantity might be one strategy to achieve this, while Bare et al [73] only include the number of threatened and endangered species, since their focus is on the potential of species extinction, and thus, they do not take common species into account.…”

Section: Absolute or Relative Changesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Why Include Impacts on Biodiversity from Land Use in LCIA and How to Select Useful Indicators?

Michelsen

Lindner

2015

Sustainability

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Abstract:Loss of biodiversity is one of the most severe threats to sustainability, and land use and land use changes are still the single most important factor. Still, there is no sign of any consensus on how to include impacts on biodiversity from land use and land use changes in LCIA. In this paper, different characteristics of biodiversity are discussed and related to proposals on how to include land use and land use changes in LCIA. We identify the question of why we should care about biodiversity as a key question, since different motivations will result in different choices for the indicators, and we call for more openness in the motivation for indicator selection. We find a promising trend in combining pressure indicators with geographic weighting and regard this as a promising way ahead. More knowledge on the consequences of different choices, such as the selection of a reference state, is still needed.

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“…In this study, we used "semi-natural woodland" as default baseline without considering alternative baseline settings. However, the average regional species richness (Koellner and Scholz 2008) and the maximum species richness (Lindeijer 2000;Weidema and Lindeijer 2001) are also proposed as a baseline for land use in LCA context. The species richness of our baseline "natural land" equals the average species number for Great Britain, which ranges from 5.0 to 7.5 species/m 2 (AFE 2001;Crawley and Harral 2001).…”

Section: Perspectivesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Uncertainties in the application of the species area relationship for characterisation factors of land occupation in life cycle assessment

Schryver

Goedkoop

Leuven

et al. 2010

Int J Life Cycle Assess

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Purpose Uncertainties in land use damage modeling are recognized, but hardly quantified in life cycle assessment (LCA). The objective of this study is to analyze the influence of various key assumptions and uncertainties within the development of characterisation factors (CFs) for land use in LCA. We assessed the influence on land use CFs of (1) parameter uncertainty and (2) the choice for a constant or land use-specific species accumulation factor z and including or excluding regional effects. Methods A model framework was developed to analyze the uncertainties of CFs for six land use types and three agricultural practices. The CFs are expressed as potential disappeared fraction (PDF) of vascular plant species based on the species area relationship (S=c.A z ). The species area relationship describes the relation between the species number and area size, with help of the species accumulation factor z and the species richness factor c. A dataset representative for Great Britain was used to quantify both modeling choices and parameter uncertainty. Modeling choices were analyzed by defining three coherent scenarios, based on cultural theory perspectives. The parameter uncertainties of average species number and species accumulation factor z were quantified using Monte Carlo simulation.Results and discussion Pair-wise comparison of the CFs shows that 68-85% of the CFs significantly differ from each other within each perspective. It is found that the ranking of organic, less intensive, and intensive land practices of each land use type is unaltered by the chosen model scenario. However, the absolute values of the CFs can change from negative to positive scores with an average difference of 0.8 PDF between the two extreme perspectives, i.e., individualistic and egalitarian. The difference between these scenarios is for 40% explained by the choice in z and for 60% by the choice in including regional effects. Within the egalitarian and hierarchist perspective the species accumulation factor z is for more than 80% responsible for the parameter uncertainty. Conclusions Modeling choices and uncertainties within the species area relationship hardly change the ranking of the different land practices but largely influence the absolute value of the CFs for land use. The absolute change in the land use CFs can change the interpretation of land use impacts compared with other stressors such as climate change.

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Biodiversity and life support impacts of land use in LCA

Cited by 83 publications

References 1 publication

UNEP-SETAC guideline on global land use impact assessment on biodiversity and ecosystem services in LCA

UNEP-SETAC guideline on global land use impact assessment on biodiversity and ecosystem services in LCA

Why Include Impacts on Biodiversity from Land Use in LCIA and How to Select Useful Indicators?

Uncertainties in the application of the species area relationship for characterisation factors of land occupation in life cycle assessment

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