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

Abstract

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.

Towards harmonizing natural resources as an area of protection in life cycle impact assessment

“…Soil can also be assessed as a resource (see e.g. Vidal Legaz et al 2016), and should not be confused with land (surface) use impacts on biodiversity. Table 2 shows a compilation and categorization of natural resources based on Klinglmair et al (2014), Dewulf et al (2015a), , and Frischknecht and Büsser Knöpfel (2013).…”

“…The main threats to soil are erosion, loss of soil organic matter (SOM), compaction, salinization, acidification, contamination, sealing, landslides, flooding, desertification, and soil biodiversity loss (EC 2006;EC 2012;. The variety of soil properties and functions and the variety of threats posed to them indicate the complexity of a holistic assessment of impacts on soil and so far no standardized method for a universal assessment of soil-quality impacts has been created Vidal Legaz et al 2016). Furthermore, this complexity corresponds to little agreement on the framework level (EC-JRC 2010; .…”

Bio-Inspired Sustainability Assessment for Building Product Development—Concept and Case Study

“…Strictly seen the availability of resources for mankind is mainly underground and does not directly contribute to the stability of the biophysical system but is crucial for the concept of scarce resource utilization prevailing in biological systems. Due to significant methodological improvements since the publication of the distance to target values, the abiotic depletion potential is covered by the anthropogenic stock extended abiotic depletion potential (AADP) model and for land use the biotic production indicator as published in LANCA 2.0 (Fraunhofer IBP, Stuttgart, Germany) is applied, which is freely available in the updated version [64][65][66][67]. Nevertheless, the assessment of impacts on the global resource stock still bears strong potentials for improvement, especially in terms of temporal and spatial differentiation.…”

Concentrations of potentially toxic elements and soil environmental quality evaluation of a typical Prosecco vineyard of the Veneto region (NE Italy)

“…Human activities are the main factors that hinder the soil to perform its services, such as biomass production, biodiversity pool, carbon pool, freshwater purification, food production, source of raw materials, and cultural environment for human and archive of archeological and geological heritage (Vidal Legaz et al 2016). Human activities with long-term impact, such as agriculture, can easily lead to soil quality degradation (MEA 2005).…”