Creating ecosystem services assessment models incorporating land use impacts based on soil quality

• Published in: The Science of the total environment 2021-06, Vol.773, p.145018-145018, Article 145018
• Main Authors: Chen, Hsin-Pei, Lee, Mengshan, Chiueh, Pei-Te
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Ecosystem services; Land use; Life cycle assessment; Remediation; Soil organic carbon; Soil quality
• ISSN: 0048-9697; 1879-1026
• DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.145018

Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a widely applied approach used to evaluate the environmental impacts of a product or service across its life cycle stages; however, the impacts of land use on ecosystem services are less addressed in most LCA studies. This study, therefore, aims to improve the LCA model by incorporating a new impact category of land use on ecosystem services at both midpoint and endpoint levels in the existing ReCiPe2016 impact assessment method. The impacts of land use in the LCA model included land occupation and land transformation. The soil quality-based indicator, soil organic carbon (SOC), was adopted to quantify the soil quality change in ecosystem services caused by land use. A site with contaminated soils was adopted to validate the proposed impact assessment approach and to compare the results of various remediation practices. Our results revealed that the characterization factors (CFs) varied with the type of land use intervention, with land occupation of settlements presenting the highest CFs and land occupation of forest presenting the most negative CFs and thus benefitting ecosystem services. These results were well reflected in the case study, while the type of land intervention was the key factor determining the impact level. The results suggested that long-term occupation, high contamination levels, and high material or energy use contributed to relatively higher impacts of land use on ecosystem services. The proposed approach enables the quantification of land use impacts on ecosystem services as expressed in monetary loss or benefit at the endpoint resource level. The impact assessment results indicated that the in situ bioremediation scenario contributed relatively higher impacts ($12,667 USD) than the excavation and thermal treatment scenario ($−37 USD). These monetary assessment results are informative and are expected to be used in the decision-making process towards achieving beneficial environmental outcomes. [Display omitted] •An LCA model considers the impact of land use on ecosystem services is introduced.•Quantification of the impact is conducted via a soil quality-based indicator.•The proposed approach is validated for remediation of a contaminated site.•Long-term land occupation had a greater impact on ecosystem services.•Land occupation is the key factor for determining the impact level.