NDLI: Irrigation mix: how to include water sources when assessing freshwater consumption impacts associated to crops

Content Provider	Springer Nature Link
Author	Hospido, Almudena Núñez, Montserrat Antón, Assumpció
Copyright Year	2012
Abstract	Impacts of activities related to freshwater use are gaining interest among the life cycle assessment (LCA) community and several approaches are nowadays available in the literature. However, the general trend still is to ignore the assessment of its impact or, luckily, its inclusion on the inventory. This paper describes a procedure to incorporate water source information at the inventory level and evaluate the influence of that profile on the environmental impact assessment level.The methodology lies on two main elements: the “irrigation mix” concept and the freshwater ecosystem impact indicator already defined in the literature. By doing so, the results obtained can be easily integrated in LCA studies of irrigated crops, or more complex studies with agricultural ingredients, where only information regarding the amount (but not the origin) of irrigation water is available.The results make more visible the benefits associated to the use of nonconventional, artificial water sources, by quantifying the improvement achieved on the water stress of a specific basin. Besides, the irrigation mix gives a better picture of the real contribution of irrigation to other impact categories (here, the global warming potential). Finally, the results were applied in a LCA study of lettuce production (an irrigated product cultivated in the studied region), and the method was analyzed against the criteria defined by the International Reference Life Cycle Data System handbook.The inclusion of the water mix in the inventory level (irrigation profile) as well as in the impact assessment level (water stress index) is straightforward to apply by LCA practitioners, resulting in a more realistic assessment of the impacts of freshwater consumption associated to crops. The implementation on a case study allowed the quantification of promoting alternative water sources in a region suffering from significant water stress as well as to improve knowledge on the environmental impact associated to freshwater consumed by one of the irrigated crops grown there. We recommend using the approach defined here in order to check its applicability to other river basins and products.
Starting Page	881
Ending Page	890
Page Count	10
File Format	PDF
ISSN	09483349
Journal	The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment
Volume Number	18
Issue Number	4
e-ISSN	16147502
Language	English
Publisher	Springer-Verlag
Publisher Date	2012-10-27
Publisher Place	Berlin, Heidelberg
Access Restriction	One Nation One Subscription (ONOS)
Subject Keyword	Blue water Desalinated water Impact assessment Inventory Life cycle assessment Wastewater Environment Environmental Economics Environmental Engineering/Biotechnology Environmental Chemistry
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Environmental Science

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1	Ministry of Education (GoI), Department of Higher Education	Sanctioning Authority	https://www.education.gov.in/ict-initiatives
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