Land use in drylands. Desertification risk assessment. An agricultural case study

CIVIT, B; ARENA, AP; PIASTRELLINI, ROXANA

chacras de coria

Conferencia; V Conferencia Internacional sobre Análisis de Ciclo de Vida; 2013

UTN FRM - Red Iberoamericana de ciclo de vida

Abstract Purpose Intensive land use activities in arid, semi-arid and sub-humid lands (dry lands)may lead to desertification phenomenon, resulting in a final stage completely depleted or entirely degraded. Life Cycle Assessment studies of products, processes, activities or services that use a piece of land in dry lands should include desertification impact category to assess land use. This work aims at showing the inclusion of a desertification impact methodology developed to assess land use considering a set of variables measured in the Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) and the calculated Characterization Factors (CF) for dry land. It also shows an application to an agricultural case study. Methods The desertification impact model is applied to 16plots devoted to agricultural activities in two countries: Argentina and Spain. In Spanish plots,winterwheat (Triticum aestivum), a traditional cereal crop and rapeseed (Brassicanapus)a widespreadenergycrop,areconsidered. Twoenergycrops, thatarebeingintroduced in thebiomassenergy circuit areconsidered in theArgentineancasestudy: rapeseed (Brassicanapus) andtopinambour (Heliantus tuberosus). A bare soilstate is considered in both countries as a referencestate. Bothcasestudiesconsider only theagriculturalstage in theInventory of a complete Life CycleAssessmentstudy and alsoonly oneimpactcategory in Life CycleEnvironmentalAssessment: desertificationimpactdue to land occupation. Results On the basis of theobtainedresultsit can be inferredthat cultivating 1 hectare (ha) of rapeseed and 1 ha of wheat has thesameimpact on theanalyzed plots in Spain, and improves the referencestate conditions in 50% of the cases. On theotherhand, rapeseedgrown in Mendoza produces almost thesameimpactthantopinambour. The latterNormalizedareas of plots could be useful to compare results in different regions of theworld to avoidtheinfluence of the area of occupation in results. Conclusions The desertification risk model makes a relevant contribution to Life Cycle Impact Assessment because there has not been an impact assessment tool for land use in drylands within the LCA framework so far. One of the main strengths of the proposed model is that it offers a simple way to quantify the desertification impact y dry lands. It is highlighted that the model can be adapted without difficulty to the evaluation of all types of crops with different management practices in different regions in the Life Cycle Impact Assessment stage.