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Land Use

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Life Cycle Impact Assessment

Abstract

Land use impacts are the effects caused by the use of land by humans, which range from changes in species composition and abundance to the disruption of ecosystem processes contributing to climate and water regulation. These impacts end up affecting key areas of protection such as human health, ecosystem quality, and natural resources. In life cycle assessment (LCA), land use impact assessment quantifies the difference between the land quality level of the studied system and a reference level over the duration and the area being used. For land transformations (change of land use), the time required for land to naturally regenerate is often considered as the duration when calculating impacts. Indicators to assess land use impacts on biodiversity in LCA focus on either species richness or on ecosystem metrics; whereas the indicators for land use impacts on ecosystem services are classed as pressure (describing land degradation processes) and state (describing overall quality) indicators. Many approaches to describe such impact indicators are presented in this chapter. The key areas for further research relate to (1) the description of the reference used to quantify the impacts; (2) aggregation of impacts on different ecosystem services; (3) the availability of inventory information to be able to inform the spatial differentiation level required for a more accurate impact assessment; (4) leveraging ‘big data’ processes to allow full utilisation of the data available on ecosystem quality; and (5) promote global consensus on impact indicators in order to facilitate comparison and stability of LCA results.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Abiotic resource use by Pilar Swart, Rodrigo A. F. Alvarenga, Jo Dewulf.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Technology, Industry and Economics, United Nations Environment Programme, 15 rue de Milan, Paris, 75009, France

    Llorenç Milà i Canals

  2. Institute of Environmental Engineering, ETH Zurich, John-von-Neumann-Weg 9, Zurich, 8093, Switzerland

    Laura de Baan

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  1. Llorenç Milà i Canals
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Correspondence to Llorenç Milà i Canals .

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  1. Division for Quantitative Sustainability Assessment, Department of Management Engineering, Technical University of Denmark (DTU), Lyngby, Denmark

    Michael Z. Hauschild

  2. Department of Environmental Science, Institute for Water and Wetland Research, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands

    Mark A.J. Huijbregts

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Milà i Canals, L., de Baan, L. (2015). Land Use. In: Hauschild, M., Huijbregts, M. (eds) Life Cycle Impact Assessment. LCA Compendium – The Complete World of Life Cycle Assessment. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9744-3_11

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