Global land use impact assessment on biodiversity and ecosystem services in LCA

摘要

Land use and land use change have severe effects on biodiversity and the capacity of ecosystems to deliver services, such as biomass production or water filtration. Whereas research on impacts of land use on biodiversity is a well-established field, research on ecosystem services motivated by Daily (1997) is less developed, but steadily catching up. The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (2005) on ecosystem changes has begun to address this gap and has highlighted the importance of nature's services for human well-being. Meanwhile, operational assessment methods support decision-makers in planning and optimizing landscapes with respect to biodiversity and multiple ecosystem services (Chan et al. 2006; Daily et al. 2009; Groot et al. 2010; Maes et al. 2012). However, until now, those methodologies have mainly focused on regional systems with distinct spatial boundaries. However, the ecological assessment of land use in product systems requires a global approach.