Page 264 - Materials Chemistry, Second Edition

250 R.K. Rosenbaum et al.

quantity of species biodiversity loss, either in relative terms (potentially dis-
2
appeared fraction of species times surface, PDF.m ) or in absolute species loss.
Existing indicators for biodiversity are at the endpoint level (in Fig. 10.24,
Ecosystem quality-AoP natural environment box in the lower row). The
UNEP-SETAC Life Cycle Initiative project on global guidance for LCIA
indicators and methods provisionally recommended characterisation factors
from Chaudhary et al. (2015) representing global potential species loss from
land use to assess impacts on biodiversity due to land use and land-use change
as hotspot analysis in LCA only (not for comparative assertions nor
eco-labelling). Further testing of the CFs as well as the development of CFs for
further land-use types are required to provide full recommendation.
• Impacts on ecosystem services: Includes a range of indicators for life support
functions that ecosystems provide. Ecosystem services are hardly covered in
LCIA and proposals are still incipient. All available methods are on the mid-
point level (in Fig. 10.24, boxes between the LCI and the endpoint), which
means that comparison or aggregation with damages on biodiversity is not
possible so far. The recent draft review of land-use characterisation models for
use in Product and Organisation Environmental Footprint (PEF/OEF) provi-
sionally (i.e. “apply with caution”) recommended characterisation factors from
LANCA (Bos et al. 2016) to assess impacts on ecosystem services (EC-JRC
2016). Currently, there are LCA methods for the following ecosystem services:

• Biotic production potential: capacity of ecosystems to produce and sustain
biomass on the long term. Available indicators are based on the soil organic
matter (or carbon) content (Brandão and Milà i Canals 2013), the biotic
production (Bos et al. 2016) and the human appropriation of the biotic
production (Alvarenga et al. 2015)
• Carbon sequestration potential: capacity of ecosystems to regulate climate by
carbon uptake from the air. The size of the climatic impact is determined by the
amountofCO 2 transfersbetweenvegetation/soilandtheatmosphereinthecourse
of terrestrial release and re-storage of carbon (Müller-Wenk and Brandão 2010)
• Freshwater regulation potential: capacity of ecosystems to regulate peak flow
and base flow of surface water. Available indicators refer to the way a
land-use system affects average water availability, flood and drought risks,
based on the partition of precipitation between evapotranspiration, ground-
water infiltration and surface runoff (Saad et al. 2013; Bos et al. 2016)
• Water purification potential: mechanical, physical and chemical capacity of
ecosystems to absorb, bind or remove pollutants from water. Site-specific
soil properties such as texture, porosity and cation exchange capacity are
used as the basis for the assessment (Saad et al. 2013)
• Erosion regulation potential: capacity of ecosystems to stabilise soils and to
prevent sediment accumulation downstream. The soil performance is
determined by the amount of soil loss (Saad et al. 2013; Bos et al. 2016) and
how this soil loss reduces the on-site soil reserves and the biotic production
(Núñez et al. 2013)