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A spatially explicit life cycle assessment midpoint indicator for soil quality in the European Union using soil organic carbon

  • LAND USE IN LCA
  • Published:
The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Purpose

Improving land use assessment in life cycle assessment (LCA) is a priority. Recently, soil organic carbon (SOC) depletion has been proposed as a transformation and occupation midpoint indicator to estimate impacts on biotic production potential (BPP). SOC depletion is recommended by the European Union in the International Reference Life Cycle Data System (ILCD) Handbook as a land use indicator. There is a consensus method to calculate SOC depletion in LCA, and ILCD proposes a set of characterization factors (CFs), but these lack geographical discrimination.

Methods

Our method of calculation for midpoint CFs follows Brandão and Milà i Canals (Int J Life Cycle Assess 18:1243–1252, 2013). We operationalize the method using SOC stocks from the LUCASOIL database of field measurements in Europe. We use potential natural vegetation (PNV) as the reference situation. CFs were calculated on a cell basis for 23 countries in Europe and grouped in three spatial scales (an administrative classification, NUTS II, and two biophysical classifications, ecoregion and climate region) according to soil type and land cover following a consensus map of cover classes. To evaluate the method’s results, CFs were applied in a case study.

Results and discussion

SOC stocks of European soils were obtained according to land use and soil type classes (excluding non-European Union countries) for the three spatial scales. A database of European transformation and occupation CFs is also presented and analyzed. The aggregation of CFs at biophysical scales (ecoregion and climate region) is similar, but NUTS II aggregation of CFs is problematic. The application of the CFs in the case study revealed significant differences compared to the outcome of using CFs collected from other land use models.

Conclusions

This paper is the first operationalization using field measurements of an updated version of the ILCD-recommended model for land use impacts in LCA. We obtained CFs for SOC depletion in Europe that can be nested within CFs suggested by ILCD since our results possess better spatial resolution but are only for European Union countries. The case study application highlighted the need for inventories to improve the spatial resolution of the life cycle processes to match the detail of LCIA models.

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Acknowledgments

Work supported by a research grant of MARETEC Research Centre/Laboratory of Robotics and Systems in Engineering and Science/Instituto Superior Técnico/University of Lisbon. R. Teixeira was supported by grant SFRH/BPD/111730/2015 from Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia. We gratefully acknowledge the comments of two anonymous reviewers that helped improve the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. MARETEC – Marine, Environment and Technology Centre, Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa, Av. Rovisco Pais, 1, 1049-001, Lisboa, Portugal

    Tiago G. Morais, Tiago Domingos & Ricardo F. M. Teixeira

Authors
  1. Tiago G. Morais
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  2. Tiago Domingos
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  3. Ricardo F. M. Teixeira
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Tiago G. Morais.

Additional information

Responsible editor: Miguel Brandão

Electronic supplementary material

Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.

ESM S1

SOC stock in European NUTS II, climate and eco regions according land cover and soil type and analyses of potential natural vegetation SOC (XLSX 104 kb)

ESM S2

Characterization factors (transformation and occupation) for the three geophysical scales (XLSX 94 kb)

ESM S3

Countries’ characterization factors (transformation and occupation) for the three geophysical scales aggregated by cells (bottom-up) and region (top-down) (XLSX 56 kb)

ESM S4

Case study correspondence between CFs in this study and ecoinvent processes, country characterization factors according to Brandão and Milà i Canals (2013), and occupation and transformation impacts in ecoinvent processes using the different characterization factors (XLSX 25 kb)

ESM S5

Comparison between country-level characterization factors and correlations between CF’s presented in this study, Brandão and Milà i Canals (2013); Alvarenga et al. (2013) and Alvarenga et al. (2015) (XLSX 31 kb)

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Morais, T.G., Domingos, T. & Teixeira, R.F.M. A spatially explicit life cycle assessment midpoint indicator for soil quality in the European Union using soil organic carbon. Int J Life Cycle Assess 21, 1076–1091 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11367-016-1077-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11367-016-1077-x

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