Abstract
Water resources have uneven distributions over time, space, and source; thus, potential impacts related to water use should be evaluated by determining the differences in water resources rather than by simply summing water use. We propose a model for weighting renewable water resources and present a case study assessing water scarcity footprints as indicators of the potential impacts of water use based on a life cycle impact assessment (LCIA). We assumed that the potential impact of a unit amount of water used is proportional to the land area or time required to obtain a unit of water from each water source. The water unavailability factor (fwua) was defined using a global hydrological modeling system with a global resolution of 0.5 × 0.5 degrees. This model can address the differences in water sources using an adjustable reference volume and temporal and spatial resolutions based on the flexible demands of users. The global virtual water flows were characterized using the fwua for each water source. Although nonrenewable and nonlocal blue water constituted only 3.8% of the total flow of the water footprint inventory, this increased to 29.7% of the total flow of the water scarcity footprint. We can estimate the potential impacts of water use that can be instinctively understood using fwua.
Highlights
Freshwater is vital for human and ecosystem functioning
The objective of this study is to propose a robust characterization model that will enable objective weighting of water renewability by location and source of water, and facilitate a case study of the life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) of the global virtual water trade [28,29] related to the international food trade as a practical study of these characterizations using this new method
nonlocal blue water (NNBW) constituted only 3.8% of the total flow of the water footprint inventory, this increased to 29.7% of the total flow of the water scarcity footprint
Summary
Freshwater is vital for human and ecosystem functioning. Water demands are increasing worldwide because of various reasons, with population growth being one of the main factors [1], and solutions to support sustainable water use are urgently needed [2]. Several studies have explored methods to quantify the amount of water used to produce food [3,4]. The water footprint is defined as the total volume of freshwater that is used directly or indirectly for production by considering water consumption and pollution using green, blue, and grey water concepts [4]. We refer to the water footprint by Water Footprint Network as “water footprint (WFN)”. Several articles have been devoted to studying the water footprint (WFN) of products and nations [5,6,7,8]
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