How Well Does LCA Model Land Use Impacts on Biodiversity?--A Comparison with Approaches from Ecology and Conservation.

The modeling of land use impacts on biodiversity is considered a priority in life cycle assessment (LCA). Many diverging approaches have been proposed in an expanding literature on the topic. The UNEP/SETAC Life Cycle Initiative is engaged in building consensus on a shared modeling framework to highlight best-practice and guide model application by practitioners. In this paper, we evaluated the performance of 31 models from both the LCA and the ecology/conservation literature (20 from LCA, 11 from non-LCA fields) according to a set of criteria reflecting (i) model completeness, (ii) biodiversity representation, (iii) impact pathway coverage, (iv) scientific quality, and (v) stakeholder acceptance. We show that LCA models tend to perform worse than those from ecology and conservation (although not significantly), implying room for improvement. We identify seven best-practice recommendations that can be implemented immediately to improve LCA models based on existing approaches in the literature. We further propose building a "consensus model" through weighted averaging of existing information, to complement future development. While our research focuses on conceptual model design, further quantitative comparison of promising models in shared case studies is an essential prerequisite for future informed model choice.

Trade-offs between maintenance of ecosystem services and socio-economic development in rural mountainous communities in southern Spain: a dynamic simulation approach.

Mountainous rural communities have traditionally managed their land extensively, resulting in land uses that provide important ecosystem services for both rural and urban areas. Over recent decades, these communities have undergone drastic changes in economic structure, population size and land use. Our understanding of the exact mechanisms that drive these changes is limited, and there is also a lack of integrative approaches to enable decision makers to steer rural development towards a more sustainable path. In this study, we build a dynamic simulation model to calculate the trade-offs between the provisions of two ecosystem services - landscape aesthetic value and water supply for human use - and the economic development associated with different land use changes. The study area for the simulation comprises two rural communities located in southern Spain. Our results show trade-offs between economic development and the provision of the selected ecosystem services in the selected study area. Land use intensification results in economic development but is not enough to prevent population loss and has a negative impact on both the water supply and on aesthetic services. We conclude that more proactive management policies are needed to mitigate a loss in ecosystem services. Simulation models like ours may facilitate the choice of these policies, as they could test the result of land use planning policies contributing therefore, to a more integrative and sustainable management of rural communities.