Combined ecological risks of nitrogen and phosphorus in European freshwaters

Eutrophication is a key water quality issue triggered by increasing nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) levels and potentially posing risks to freshwater biota. We predicted the probability that an invertebrate species within a community assemblage becomes absent due to nutrient stress as the ecological risk (ER) for European lakes and streams subjected to N and P pollution from 1985 to 2011. The ER was calculated as a function of species-specific tolerances to NO3 - and total P concentrations and water quality monitoring data. Lake and stream ER averaged 50% in the last monitored year (i.e. 2011) and we observed a decrease by 22% and 38% in lake and stream ER (respectively) of river basins since 1985. Additionally, the ER from N stress surpassed that of P in both freshwater systems. The ER can be applied to identify river basins most subjected to eutrophication risks and the main drivers of impacts

Review of methods addressing freshwater use in life cycle inventory and impact assessment

Purpose: In recent years, several methods have been developed which propose different freshwater use inventory schemes and impact assessment characterization models considering various cause-effect chain relationships. This work reviewed a multitude of methods and indicators for freshwater use potentially applicable in life cycle assessment (LCA). This review is used as a basis to identify the key elements to build a scientific consensus for operational characterization methods for LCA. Methods: This evaluation builds on the criteria and procedure developed within the International Reference Life Cycle Data System Handbook and has been adapted for the purpose of this project. It therefore includes (1) description of relevant cause-effect chains, (2) definition of criteria to evaluate the existing methods, (3) development of sub-criteria specific to freshwater use, and (4) description and review of existing methods addressing freshwater in LCA. Results and discussion: No single method is available which comprehensively describes all potential impacts derived from freshwater use. However, this review highlights several key findings to design a characterization method encompassing all the impact pathways of the assessment of freshwater use and consumption in life cycle assessment framework as the following: (1) in most of databases and methods, consistent freshwater balances are not reported either because output is not considered or because polluted freshwater is recalculated based on a critical dilution approach; (2) at the midpoint level, most methods are related to water scarcity index and correspond to the methodological choice of an indicator simplified in terms of the number of parameters (scarcity) and freshwater uses (freshwater consumption or freshwater withdrawal) considered. More comprehensive scarcity indices distinguish different freshwater types and functionalities. (3) At the endpoint level, several methods already exist which report results in units compatible with traditional human health and ecosystem quality damage and cover various cause-effect chains, e.g., the decrease of terrestrial biodiversity due to freshwater consumption. (4) Midpoint and endpoint indicators have various levels of spatial differentiation, i.e., generic factors with no differentiation at all, or country, watershed, and grid cell differentiation. Conclusions: Existing databases should be (1) completed with input and output freshwater flow differentiated according to water types based on its origin (surface water, groundwater, and precipitation water stored as soil moisture), (2) regionalized, and (3) if possible, characterized with a set of quality parameters. The assessment of impacts related to freshwater use is possible by assembling methods in a comprehensive methodology to characterize each use adequatel

The Glasgow consensus on the delineation between pesticide emission inventory and impact assessment for LCA

Purpose: Pesticides are applied to agricultural fields in order to optimise crop yield and their global use is substantial. Their consideration in Life cycle assessment (LCA) is currently affected by important inconsistencies between the emission inventory and impact assessment phases of LCA. A clear definition of the delineation between the product system model (life cycle inventory, technosphere) and the natural environment (life cycle impact assessment, ecosphere) is currently missing and could be established via consensus building. Methods: A workshop held on the 11 May 2013, in Glasgow, UK, back to back with the 23rd SETAC Europe meeting had the goal of establishing consensus and creating clear guidelines where the boundary between the emission inventory and the impact characterisation model should be set in all three spatial dimensions and time when considering application of substances to an open agricultural field or in greenhouses, and consequent emissions to the natural environment and their potential impacts. More than 30 specialists in agrifood LCI, LCIA, risk assessment, and ecotoxicology, representing industry, government, and academia from 15 countries and four continents met to discuss and reach consensus. The resulting guidelines target LCA practitioners, data (base) and characterisation method developers, and decision makers. Results and discussion: Although, the initial goal was to define recommendations concerning boundaries between technosphere and ecosphere, it became clear that these strongly depend on goal and scope of an LCA study. Instead, the focus was on defining a clear interface between LCI and LCIA, capable of supporting any goal and scope requirements while avoiding double counting or exclusion of important emission flows and their potential impacts. Consensus was reached accordingly on distinct sets of recommendations for LCI and LCIA respectively, recommending for example that buffer zones should be considered as part of the crop production system and the change in yield per ha be considered. While the spatial dimensions of the field were not fixed, the temporal boundary between dynamic LCI fate modelling and steady-state LCIA fate modelling needs to be defined. Conclusions and recommendations: For pesticides application, the inventory should report: pesticide identification, crop, mass applied of each active ingredient, application method or formulation type, presence of buffer zones (y/n), location/country, application time in days before harvest and crop growth stage during application, adherence with Good Agricultural Practice (GAP), and whether the field is considered part of the technosphere or the ecosphere. Additionally, emission fractions to defined environmental media on-field and off-field should be reported. For LCIA, the directly concerned impact categories were identified as well as a list of relevant fate and exposure processes. Next steps and future work were identified: 1) establishing default emission fractions to environmental media for integration into LCI databases, and 2) interaction among impact model developers to extend current methods with new elements/processes mentioned in the recommendations, including targeted technical workshops on “how to” model specific processes.JRC.H.8-Sustainability Assessmen

LC‐IMPACT: A regionalized life cycle damage assessment method

Life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) is a lively field of research, and data and models are continuously improved in terms of impact pathways covered, reliability, and spatial detail. However, many of these advancements are scattered throughout the scientific literature, making it difficult for practitioners to apply the new models. Here, we present the LC‐IMPACT method that provides characterization factors at the damage level for 11 impact categories related to three areas of protection (human health, ecosystem quality, natural resources). Human health damage is quantified as disability adjusted life years, damage to ecosystem quality as global species extinction equivalents (based on potentially disappeared fraction of species), and damage to mineral resources as kilogram of extra ore extracted. Seven of the impact categories include spatial differentiation at various levels of spatial scale. The influence of value choices related to the time horizon and the level of scientific evidence of the impacts considered is quantified with four distinct sets of characterization factors. We demonstrate the applicability of the proposed method with an illustrative life cycle assessment example of different fuel options in Europe (petrol or biofuel). Differences between generic and regionalized impacts vary up to two orders of magnitude for some of the selected impact categories, highlighting the importance of spatial detail in LCIA. This article met the requirements for a gold – gold JIE data openness badge described at http://jie.click/badges.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

The influence of consumer behavior on the environmental footprint of passenger car tires

Understanding the influence of consumer behavior on the life-cycle of products can provide further insights into effective mitigation strategies. Here, we developed a stochastic model to quantify the influence of consumer behavior on midpoint and endpoint impacts of European passenger car tires. The life-cycle included resource extraction, production, use, and end-of-life stages of a passenger car tire with a functional unit of driving 50,000 km. The combined influence of variability in the lifetime, rolling resistance, size and inflation pressure of the tire, and the mass and engine efficiency of the car on a range of environmental footprints was assessed via Monte-Carlo simulations. We found that differences in consumer behavior can change the environmental impacts of tires with a factor 1.6 to 2.1 (95th/5th percentile). Environmental savings over the life-cycle of tires are effectively achievable by stimulating the use of smaller cars and fuel-efficient tires with longer lifetimes. We found that a shift in consumer behavior specifically related to tires can results in mitigations of the tire’s life-cycle impacts ranging from 13% for human toxicity to 26% for climate change. Our findings show that a detailed variability analysis can provide case-specific and realistic recommendations to mitigate environmental footprints

Quantifying the Trade-off between Parameter and Model Structure Uncertainty in Life Cycle Impact Assessment

To enhance the use of quantitative uncertainty assessments in life cycle impact assessment practice, we suggest to quantify the trade-off between parameter uncertainty, i.e. any uncertainty associated with data and methods used to quantify the model parameters, and model structure uncertainty, i.e. the uncertainty about the relations and mechanisms being studied. In this paper we show the trade-off between the two types of uncertainty in a case of maize production with a focus on freshwater ecotoxicity due to pesticide application in The Netherlands. Parameter uncertainty in pesticide emissions, chemical-specific data, effect and damage data, and fractions of metabolite formation of degradation products was statistically quantified via probabilistic simulation, i.e. Monte Carlo simulation. Model structure uncertainties regarding the concentration–response model to be included, the selection of the damage model, and the inclusion of pesticide transformation products were assessed via discrete choice analysis. We conclude that to arrive at a minimum level of overall uncertainty the linear concentration–response model is preferable, while the transformation products may be excluded. Selecting the damage model has a relatively low influence on the overall uncertainty. Our study shows that quantifying the trade-off between different types of uncertainty can help to identify optimal model complexity from an uncertainty point of view

Global relative species loss due to first-generation biofuel production for the transport sector

Contains fulltext : 203874.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access

Global relative species loss due to first generation biofuel production for the transport sector

The global demand for biofuels in the transport sector may lead to significant biodiversity impacts via multiple human pressures. Biodiversity assessments of biofuels, however, seldom simultaneously address several impact pathways, which can lead to biased comparisons with fossil fuels. The goal of the present study was to quantify the direct influence of habitat loss, water consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions on potential global species richness loss due to the current production of first‐generation biodiesel from soybean and rapeseed and bioethanol from sugarcane and corn. We found that the global relative species loss due to biofuel production exceeded that of fossil petrol and diesel production in more than 90% of the locations considered. Habitat loss was the dominating stressor with Chinese corn, Brazilian soybean and Brazilian sugarcane having a particularly large biodiversity impact. Spatial variation within countries was high, with 90th percentiles differing by a factor of 9 to 22 between locations. We conclude that displacing fossil fuels with first‐generation biofuels will likely negatively affect global biodiversity, no matter which feedstock is used or where it is produced. Environmental policy may therefore focus on the introduction of other renewable options in the transport sector.JRC.D.5-Food Securit