Ecosystem-Scale Biodiversity in Fisheries Life Cycle Impact Assessment

Area of Science:

• Environmental Science
• Ecosystem Dynamics
• Life Cycle Assessment

Background:

• Fisheries impacts are increasingly accounted for in Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) at regional and global scales.
• Existing LCA methods for fisheries primarily focus on direct impacts on exploited species.
• There is a need to incorporate indirect and ecosystem-level effects of fishing into LCA.

Purpose of the Study:

• To expand the fisheries impact pathway in LCA to the ecosystem scale.
• To quantify indirect impacts of fishing on marine biodiversity by integrating ecosystem dynamics.
• To develop a novel methodology for assessing community-scale ecotoxicity impacts from fisheries.

Main Methods:

• Coupling dynamic ecosystem modeling with species sensitivity distribution curves.
• Adapting USEtox effect factor modeling for community-scale ecotoxicity.
• Incorporating indirect effects via predator-prey interactions and a bidirectional threshold interval.

Main Results:

• A proof of concept was applied to the Adriatic Sea, yielding characterization factors for 26 exploited functional groups.
• Impacts were quantified in potentially affected fraction (PAF) units, showing a wide range across different fish groups.
• The operability of the approach was validated, with impact values spanning six orders of magnitude.

Conclusions:

• The novel methodology successfully expands fisheries impact assessment to the ecosystem scale.
• The integration of indirect effects and ecosystem dynamics provides a more holistic view of fishing impacts on biodiversity.
• This approach enhances the characterization of biodiversity loss within life cycle impact assessment.