High-Resolution Assessment of Land Use Impacts on Biodiversity in Life Cycle Assessment Using Species Habitat Suitability Models

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• 作者：Laura de Baan ; Michael Curran ; Carlo Rondinini ; Piero Visconti ; Stefanie Hellweg ; Thomas Koellner
• 刊名：Environmental Science & Technology
• 出版年：2015
• 出版时间：February 17, 2015
• 年：2015
• 卷：49
• 期：4
• 页码：2237-2244
• 全文大小：375K
• ISSN：1520-5851

文摘

Agricultural land use is a main driver of global biodiversity loss. The assessment of land use impacts in decision-support tools such as life cycle assessment (LCA) requires spatially explicit models, but existing approaches are either not spatially differentiated or modeled at very coarse scales (e.g., biomes or ecoregions). In this paper, we develop a high-resolution (900 m) assessment method for land use impacts on biodiversity based on habitat suitability models (HSM) of mammal species. This method considers potential land use effects on individual species, and impacts are weighted by the species鈥?conservation status and global rarity. We illustrate the method using a case study of crop production in East Africa, but the underlying HSMs developed by the Global Mammals Assessment are available globally. We calculate impacts of three major export crops and compare the results to two previously developed methods (focusing on local and regional impacts, respectively) to assess the relevance of the methodological innovations proposed in this paper. The results highlight hotspots of product-related biodiversity impacts that help characterize the links among agricultural production, consumption, and biodiversity loss.