Hemeroby as an impact category indicator for the integration of land use into life cycle (impact) assessment

Fehrenbach, Henry; Grahl, Birgit; Giegrich, Jürgen; Busch, Mirjam

doi:10.1007/s11367-015-0955-y

Cited by 38 publications

(35 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…The hemeroby is a measure of naturalness, i.e. calculates the magnitude of deviation from the potential natural vegetation (these naturalness categories have been recently refined by Fehrenbach et al, 2015).…”

Section: Soil Quality and Soil Functions In Lcamentioning

confidence: 99%

Soil quality, properties, and functions in life cycle assessment: an evaluation of models

Legaz

Souza

Teixeira

et al. 2017

Journal of Cleaner Production

101

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Soils provide essential ecosystem services for supporting both human and ecosystem needs and has been under pressures resulting from the intensification and expansion of human activities. In the last 15 years, substantial efforts have been made to quantify the impacts on soils derived from production systems and their related supply chains. In this study, a systematic, qualitative evaluation of up-to-date models connecting land occupation and land transformation to soil impact indicators (e.g., soil properties, functions, and threats) is performed. The focus is on models that may be applied for assessing supply chains, namely in the context of life cycle assessment (LCA). A range of eleven soil-related models was selected and evaluated against different criteria, including scientific soundness, stakeholders' acceptance, reproducibility, and the applicability of models from the perspective of LCA practitioners. Additionally, this study proposes a new land use cause-effect chain to qualify the impacts of land use on soils. None of the models is fulfilling all the criteria and includes comprehensively the cause-effect impact pathways. Notably, trade-offs were most frequent between the relevance of the modeled impact processes and the models' applicability. On the one hand, models proposing multi-indicators cover several drivers of impacts and have a broader scope. On the other hand, several models just focus on one driver of impact, but may provide more relevant impact characterization. Our results provide common ground for the development and identification of models that provide a comprehensive and robust assessment of land use change and land use impacts on soils. Indeed, to ensure both a comprehensive and relevant characterization of impacts, the study identifies several research needs for further models' developments, namely: 1) adopting a common land use cause-effect chain and land use classification; 2) accounting for different land management and land use intensities; 3) expanding the inventory data beyond the accounting of the area related to a certain land use; 4) assessing the added value of multi-indicators compared to single indicators, including the reduction of possible redundancies in the impact evaluation; 5) improving consistency from midpoint to endpoint characterisation, especially the link with biodiversity; 6) guiding the calculation of normalization factors; and 7) assessing systematically model's uncertainty.

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Section: Soil Quality and Soil Functions In Lcamentioning

confidence: 99%

Soil quality, properties, and functions in life cycle assessment: an evaluation of models

Legaz

Souza

Teixeira

et al. 2017

Journal of Cleaner Production

101

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“…Although Sala et al (2016) recommend further developed characterization models for resource, land, and water use, they still classify these models with the quality level III. Thus, these models and others in the stage of development like the hemeroby concept (Fehrenbach et al 2015) which addresses land use, and in addition, biodiversity and intact ecosystems are still not readily applicable to assess environmental hazards from mining. Furthermore, the LCA approach fails to assess potential environmental hazards from accidents.…”

Section: Life Cycle Assessmentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The environmental criticality of primary raw materials – A new methodology to assess global environmental hazard potentials of minerals and metals from mining

Manhart

Vogt

Priester³

et al. 2018

Miner Econ

Self Cite

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Environmental aspects are more and more relevant for raw material policy-making and responsible sourcing strategies. This trend is partly based on growing public awareness of problems and impacts associated with extraction and processing of ores and minerals. Disaster events such as the tailing dam failures in Kolontár (Hungary, October 2010) and Bento Rodriguez (Brazil, November 2015) quite frequently highlight the fact that many mining and processing practices are associated with substantial environmental impacts and risks for the local and even regional environments. However, there is also increasing recognition that the rather devastating environmental performance of many past and current mining projects is a major reason for communities around the world to oppose both the development of new and the expansion of existing mines. Although mining companies constantly have to increase their efforts to secure the social license to operate, many scholars already point out that both environmental impacts and associated social and political reactions are emerging as a decisive factor determining current and future raw material supply. In light of these concerns, raw material policy-making requires solid information on environmental hot spots in mining, as well as on raw materials of particular concern. Whereas indicators and information systems are already well developed for geological, technical, structural, political, regulatory, and economic supply risks, there is currently no holistic method and information system for environmental concerns associated with the mining of raw materials. Although life cycle assessment can provide methodological support for various environmental aspects, it has substantial weaknesses in the fields of ecosystem degradation, impacts on fresh-and groundwater resources, and hazard potentials from episodic disaster events. This paper presents a methodology that aims to fill this gap. Our proposed method provides a system of 11 indicators allowing the identification of raw material-specific environmental hot spots and rankings of raw materials. Although the indicator system is qualitative in nature, its composition and aggregation cover the most relevant environmental concerns arising from mining and allow prioritizing of raw materials from a global environmental perspective.

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“…For the sake of simplicity, one study [137] was allocated to furniture though the object under investigation rather belongs to household devices. A total of 14 studies do not follow a comparative approach [50,52,82,[138][139][140][141][142][143][144][145][146][147][148].…”

Section: Characterization Of the Samplementioning

confidence: 99%

Environmental Indicators for the Evaluation of Wood Products in Consideration of Site-Dependent Aspects: A Review and Integrated Approach

2017

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On the way towards a more biobased economy, the sustainable use of global wood resources remains a challenge as several trade-offs arise, e.g., from an increased energetic use of wood, an increased use of innovative but probably less recyclable wood composites, or from the need to conserve other forest ecosystem services. The aim of this study is to identify existing environmental indicators and methods for an evaluation of the sustainability of wood products in consideration of all life cycle stages, site-dependent aspects and later use in corporate decision-making. We chose a systematic literature review to answer the research questions explicitly and comprehensively. Qualitative content analysis was used to code indicators and scientific methods according to the Pressure-State-Response (PSR) framework. The sample (N = 118) is characterized by a high number of life cycle assessment (LCA) case studies. In 51% of all studies, the study authors use a combination of different methods. A total of 78 indicators and 20 site-dependent aspects could be identified in the sample. The study findings represent a first step towards a holistic environmental assessment of wood products.

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Hemeroby as an impact category indicator for the integration of land use into life cycle (impact) assessment

Cited by 38 publications

References 14 publications

Soil quality, properties, and functions in life cycle assessment: an evaluation of models

Soil quality, properties, and functions in life cycle assessment: an evaluation of models

The environmental criticality of primary raw materials – A new methodology to assess global environmental hazard potentials of minerals and metals from mining

Environmental Indicators for the Evaluation of Wood Products in Consideration of Site-Dependent Aspects: A Review and Integrated Approach

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