Land Use in Product Life Cycles and Ecosystem Quality
Europäische Hochschulschriften / European University Studies / Publications Universitaires Européennes Series, Vol. 3012

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is widely used for environmental planning and decision-making. However, land use and its consequences for ecosystem quality still are not adequately taken into account in LCA. Land use is an economic activity that generates large benefits for human society. As a side effect it has caused many environmental problems such as endangerment of species, nutrification of lakes and rivers, loss of fertile soil, and impact on landscapes? aesthetics. All of these impacts put pressure on the regional ecosystem quality. This book focuses on biodiversity, which is conceptualised as an important part of ecosystem quality. A method for assessing land use impacts on biodiversity is developed and the general method is made operable using empirical information on species diversity. The developed set of characterisation factors EDPsp-div for different land use types can be easily integrated in damage oriented methods of Life Cycle Impact Assessment. A case study on food products shows the application of the method.

Product life cycle – Impact assessment – Food products – Agriculture – Urban area – Land use types – Corine – Ecosystem damage – Plant species diversity.

Thomas Köllner (born 1969 in Germany) studied biology and business administration at the University of Göttingen and Trinity College Dublin. He received his Master’s Degree in biology in 1996 and started his Ph.D. at the Institute for Economy and the Environment at the University of St. Gallen. While preparing his dissertation, he worked on the project Sustainable Nutrition: Visions, Strategies, and Instruments supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation within the Priority Programme Environment and on the project Land use in Life Cycle Assessment supported by the Swiss Office for Education and Science. His main research focus is the methodological development of Life Cycle Assessment. Since 2001 he has been employed at the Department of Environmental Sciences at the ETH Zurich. He is leading the research group Ecosystem services.