Land use impact assessment of arid lands: case study in the mid-west arid region of Argentina

CIVIT, B; ARENA, AP

Pucon

Conferencia; III Conferencia Internacional de Análisis de Ciclo de Vida en Latinoamérica; 2009

CIMM

In the last few years many studies have been done aiming at defining land use indicators in Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) context to evaluate the impacts that different activities produce on soil quality and/or biodiversity. Nevertheless, there is no wide consensus about the way of defining those indicators. In arid lands, human activities that require the intensive use of land may lead to desertification phenomenon achieving an irreversible degraded state of soil and its life functions. Large areas in the world are in desertification risk, being Argentina the Latin-American country with more extension of arid lands. In this work the results obtained by the application of the characterization model developed for assessing desertification impact in the mid west arid region of Argentina, are shown. The model developed for assessing land use impact in arid lands has been applied to three case studies: rape seed cultivation, bricks production and a rural urbanization. The results show that agricultural activity causes a benefit in land properties meanwhile the other two cases produce a harmful effect on the arid environment. From the obtained results, it can be concluded that the model developed represent in a suitable way the impact of desertification in the considered region and other arid lands of the world.