Abstract
ContextConventional life cycle assessment (LCA) has been increasingly criticized for lacking spatial information, especially for agricultural systems where high spatial variation and sensitivity is present.ObjectivesThe objective of this research is twofold: first, to assess the potential environmental impacts and the production efficiency of pastoralism farming, and, second, to identify the influence of the spatial distribution of farms on the environmental impacts, if any.MethodsA cradle-to-gate spatialized agricultural LCA was conducted for 45 farms surveyed from the Hulunbuir Grassland by splitting direct onsite processes from upstream processes, adopting the spatialized characterization factors (SCFs) of IMPACT World+.ResultsContrasting results were observed for different impact categories regarding whether upstream or onsite processes served as the environmental hotspot. While direct onsite animal emissions did not show spatial dependency at the inventory stage, its resulting impact scores demonstrated the most contrasting spatial patterns among various impact categories, depending on whether and how spatial resolution and location were introduced during the life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) stage. Statistical evidence supported a high emission cluster for farms located close to Hailar city compared to a low cluster for those located further south/west of the city.ConclusionsA cradle-to-gate spatialized agricultural LCA was proposed and applied to assess the environmental impacts of pastoralism farming in Hulunbuir Grassland. The overall spatial dependency of the LCA results was weak at the individual farm level, if present; it depended on the interactions between the spatial variation within the life cycle inventory and the spatial resolution and location of the SCFs. Environmental burden shifting occurred between different impact categories, and the policy challenge of how to increase production efficiency in the pastoralism system remains.
Highlights
Increasing demand for dairy and meat products in many countries calls for urgent action to balance consumption and environmental impacts
The overall spatial dependence of the Life cycle assessment (LCA) results was weak, if present, it depended on the interactions between spatial variation within the life cycle inventory and the spatial resolution and location of the spatialized characterization factors (SCFs)
This is due to differences in elementary flows contributing to different impact categories as well as the distinct SCFs applied to upstream vs. onsite processes during the life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) stage for the same impact
Summary
Increasing demand for dairy and meat products in many countries calls for urgent action to balance consumption and environmental impacts. A standard LCA (i.e. following ISO 14040) considers aggregated elementary flows (regardless of their geographic origins) that are multiplied by default characterization factors instead of site-specific impact characterization. It typically addresses a problem from the perspective of a product system (e.g., unit process flowchart) without incorporating any spatial factors and context of landscape structure, which are fundamental assumptions for various ecological models (Gaucherel et al 2010, Yu et al 2017, Kobler et al 2019). Empirical evidence has demonstrated that integration of spatial information in LCAs can lead to very high variation by location (Pelton 2019, Yang et al 2020) and sometimes result in different or even opposite outcomes to those of standard LCAs (Chaplin-Kramer et al 2017, Frischknecht et al 2019)
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