Creating ecosystem services assessment models incorporating land use impacts based on soil quality

Area of Science:

• Environmental Science
• Ecosystem Services
• Life Cycle Assessment

Background:

• Life cycle assessment (LCA) commonly overlooks land use impacts on ecosystem services.
• Existing LCA models need improvement to include land occupation and transformation effects.

Purpose of the Study:

• To enhance the ReCiPe2016 LCA method by incorporating land use impacts on ecosystem services.
• To quantify land use impacts using soil organic carbon (SOC) as an indicator for soil quality changes.
• To validate the improved LCA approach with a case study on contaminated soil remediation.

Main Methods:

• Incorporated land occupation and land transformation as new impact categories in LCA.
• Utilized soil organic carbon (SOC) to quantify ecosystem service changes due to land use.
• Applied the developed method to a contaminated site, comparing remediation strategies.

Main Results:

• Characterization factors (CFs) for land use impacts vary significantly by intervention type (settlements vs. forests).
• Land occupation of forests provided the most benefit to ecosystem services, while settlements had the highest impact.
• In situ bioremediation demonstrated a higher positive impact ($12,667 USD) compared to excavation and thermal treatment ($-37 USD).

Conclusions:

• The enhanced LCA model effectively quantifies land use impacts on ecosystem services, including monetary valuation.
• Land intervention type, duration, contamination level, and resource use are key determinants of land use impact.
• The findings support informed decision-making for environmental benefit, highlighting the efficacy of in situ bioremediation.