Page 245 - Materials Chemistry, Second Edition

4.5 Impact Categories, Impact Indicators and Characterisation Factors 229

Certainly there is no clear dividing line between the levels, but nevertheless
a transition can be perceived half way (approximately at level 4) between (still)
natural and remote, with a near coincidence to the border between extensive and
intensive agriculture. The first three stages are those, which are usually perceived
as ‘nature’ (especially from an European perspective), even if the designation
‘natural’ strictly speaking only applies to 1 (ahemerob; wilderness). 141) Starting
from level 5 technical aspects of intensive human influence on the ground by
intensive agriculture, building of settlements, traffic routes and industrial surfaces
clearly predominate. The highest level of remoteness from nature is found for
sealed areas (level 7, metahemerobic or artificial). Even though an 11-level scale
according to Brentrup permits a more refined assignment of land use, it is doubtful
whether real inventories in LCIs provide such depth of detail necessary for local
environmental evaluations. In addition, global LCAs also require comparability of
hemerobic levels. A restriction to Europe (as in the 11-level scale) is inadmissible.
An at least theoretically attractive alternative to the concept of hemerobic levels is
a quality index for soils/ecological systems that considers the variety of species and
the productivity of the respective ecological system. 142) An advantage would be a
continuous scale which would allow the development of one characteristic figure for
the category land use; on the other hand small productivity and low variety of species
do by no means indicate inferior ecological systems as all extreme ecological systems,
for example, in high-alpine or arctic areas, steppes, dunes, meagre meadows, and
so on, probably correspond to this description. Strictly speaking this is also valid
for deserts but these do not fulfil the protection requirement of shortage (at least
not on a global scale) and should be regarded separately.
In the hemerobic level concept scarceness is the common denominator of the
impact category land use and other input-related categories. If hemerobic levels
1 and 2 in industrialised countries were not so scarce, beautiful old cultural
landscapes (often confounded with nature itself) would be placed in the lead
position of the natural spaces worth protecting. Such concepts should be employed
for a transfer of the hemerobic level approach to other continents without losing
sight of the global context (i.e. tropical rain forests, boreal coniferous forests and
many other natural spaces).
4.5.1.6.2 Characterisation Using the Hemerobic Level Concept For the quantifica-
tion of land use at least three factors with respect to the proposed characterisation
model have to be provided:

2
1. Area per fU (m ),
2. Utilisation period (a)
3. Type of use (hemerobic levels 1–7).

141) Human influences onthe atmosphere, precipitations and water currents cannot completely be
excluded; with respect to this there are no areas on earth which are completely natural Kl¨ opffer
(2012b).
142) Lindeijer (1998).