What does Life-Cycle Assessment of agricultural products need for more meaningful inclusion of biodiversity?

peer-reviewedDecision‐makers increasingly use life‐cycle assessment (LCA) as a tool to measure the environmental sustainability of products. LCA is of particular importance in globalized agricultural supply chains, which have environmental effects in multiple and spatially dispersed locations. Incorporation of impacts on biodiversity that arise from agricultural production systems into environmental assessment methods is an emerging area of work in LCA, and current approaches have limitations, including the need for (i) improved assessment of impacts to biodiversity associated with agricultural production, (ii) inclusion of new biodiversity indicators (e.g. conservation value, functional diversity, ecosystem services) and (iii) inclusion of previously unaccounted modelling variables that go beyond land‐use impacts (e.g. climate change, water and soil quality). Synthesis and applications. Ecological models and understanding can contribute to address the limitations of current life‐cycle assessment (LCA) methods in agricultural production systems and to make them more ecologically relevant. This will be necessary to ensure that biodiversity is not neglected in decision‐making that relies on LCA

Fundamental Science Investigations to Develop a 6-MV Laser Triggered Gas Switch for ZR: First Annual Report.

In October 2005, an intensive three-year Laser Triggered Gas Switch (LTGS) development program was initiated to investigate and solve observed performance and reliability issues with the LTGS for ZR. The approach taken has been one of mission-focused research: to revisit and reassess the design, to establish a fundamental understanding of LTGS operation and failure modes, and to test evolving operational hypotheses. This effort is aimed toward deploying an initial switch for ZR in 2007, on supporting rolling upgrades to ZR as the technology can be developed, and to prepare with scientific understanding for the even higher voltage switches anticipated needed for future high-yield accelerators. The ZR LTGS was identified as a potential area of concern quite early, but since initial assessments performed on a simplified Switch Test Bed (STB) at 5 MV showed 300-shot lifetimes on multiple switch builds, this component was judged acceptable. When the Z{sub 20} engineering module was brought online in October 2003 frequent flashovers of the plastic switch envelope were observed at the increased stresses required to compensate for the programmatically increased ZR load inductance. As of October 2006, there have been 1423 Z{sub 20} shots assessing a variety of LTGS designs. Numerous incremental and fundamental switch design modifications have been investigated. As we continue to investigate the LTGS, the basic science of plastic surface tracking, laser triggering, cascade breakdown, and optics degradation remain high-priority mission-focused research topics. Significant progress has been made and, while the switch does not yet achieve design requirements, we are on the path to develop successively better switches for rolling upgrade improvements to ZR. This report summarizes the work performed in FY 2006 by the large team. A high-level summary is followed by detailed individual topical reports