Abstract
PurposeIn life cycle assessment (LCA), eutrophication is commonly assessed using site-generic characterisation factors, despite being a site-dependent environmental impact. The purpose of this study was to improve the environmental relevance of marine eutrophication impact assessment in LCA, particularly regarding the impact assessment of waterborne nutrient emissions from Swedish agriculture.MethodsCharacterisation factors were derived using site-dependent data on nutrient transport for all agricultural soils in Sweden, divided into 968 catchment areas, and considering the Baltic Sea, the receiving marine compartment, as both nitrogen- and phosphorus-limited. These new characterisation factors were then applied to waterborne nutrient emissions from typical grass ley and spring barley cultivation in all catchments.Results and discussionThe site-dependent marine eutrophication characterisation factors obtained for nutrient leaching from soils varied between 0.056 and 0.986 kg Neq/kg N and between 0 and 7.23 kg Neq/kg P among sites in Sweden. On applying the new characterisation factors to spring barley and grass ley cultivation at different sites in Sweden, the total marine eutrophication impact from waterborne nutrient emissions for these crops varied by up to two orders of magnitude between sites. This variation shows that site plays an important role in determining the actual impact of an emission, which means that site-dependent impact assessment could provide valuable information to life cycle assessments and increase the relevance of LCA as a tool for assessment of product-related eutrophication impacts.ConclusionsCharacterisation factors for marine eutrophication impact assessment at high spatial resolution, considering both the site-dependent fate of eutrophying compounds and specific nutrient limitations in the recipient waterbody, were developed for waterborne nutrient emissions from agriculture in Sweden. Application of the characterisation factors revealed variations in calculated impacts between sites in Sweden, highlighting the importance of spatial differentiation of characterisation modelling within the scale of the impact.
Highlights
Life cycle assessment (LCA) was originally developed as a site-independent tool, where the environments affected by the assessed impacts represent average or generic recipients (Potting and Hauschild 2006)
Eutrophication is one of the impact categories most frequently assessed in LCA and is one of the impact categories representing a regional environmental impact, which means that site-differentiated life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) modelling may be required for accurate representation of impacts
The characterisation factor (CF) for P tended to be higher in the north and were zero for the catchments that drain into Öresund and Kattegat, since the nutrient limitation factor for P is zero in these areas
Summary
Life cycle assessment (LCA) was originally developed as a site-independent tool, where the environments affected by the assessed impacts represent average or generic recipients (Potting and Hauschild 2006). For all impact categories where the impact is dependent on the activity location, spatial differentiation can be highly important to achieve representative assessment of the environmental impacts of a system, and. Int J Life Cycle Assess (2018) 23:70–81 failure to take spatial variation into account may give misleading results (Azevedo et al 2013; Potting and Hauschild 2006). Eutrophication is one of the impact categories most frequently assessed in LCA and is one of the impact categories representing a regional environmental impact, which means that site-differentiated life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) modelling may be required for accurate representation of impacts
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