posted on 2021-08-31, 19:36authored byThomas Sonderegger, Stephan Pfister
To guide us toward a sustainable
future, the impacts of human activities
on natural resources need to be understood and quantified. In this
study on global agriculture, we use a Life Cycle Assessment framework
to estimate potential long-term soil productivity losses caused by
soil compaction and water erosion due to agricultural crop production.
We combine several data sets to model spatially resolved Life Cycle
Inventory information at the global level and multiply results with
characterization factors from a previous publication. The global picture
shows a compaction-stressed “Global North” and an erosion-stressed
“Global South”, with some countries and regions in between,
for example, China and parts of South America. Results show that both
compaction and water erosion impacts matter at the global level and
that overall potential long-term productivity losses of 10–20%
can be expected, with high relative impacts on low input production
systems. These losses might limit long-term agricultural productivity
and lead to additional land use change. Our work adds to and extends
the discussion of global assessments of soil degradation. Furthermore,
we prove the suggested framework to be applicable and useful for Life
Cycle Assessments and other studies and provide results that can be
used in such global assessments.