Advancing the representation of habitat fragmentation in LCIA

Modelling of land use impacts on biodiversity is a pressing matter in life cycle assessment. In recent years, efforts to improve the representation of land use impacts on biodiversity in life cycle impact assessment (LCIA)... [ view full abstract ]

Modelling of land use impacts on biodiversity is a pressing matter in life cycle assessment. In recent years, efforts to improve the representation of land use impacts on biodiversity in life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) involved incorporating ecology and conservation biology models, including the use of meta-analyses of various species groups and regions (e.g. de Baan et al., 2013), species-area relationships (e.g. Chaudhary et al., 2015), and habitat suitability models (e.g. de Baan et al., 2015). In current LCIA models, land use impacts on biodiversity are primarily estimated based on habitat loss. However, ecology and conservation sciences indicate that habitat fragmentation is an additional important driver for biodiversity loss, rather than habitat loss alone. Empirical research (e.g. Jackson & Fahrig, 2011) as well as the development of habitat fragmentation models (e.g. Rybicki & Hanski, 2013) have confirmed this notion.

Habitat fragmentation alters the landscape and often causes barriers to the migration of wildlife (e.g. seasonal migration or dispersal of individuals). In addition, fragmentation leads to smaller and more isolated suitable patches within an unattractive matrix (Jackson & Fahrig, 2011). Altering the landscape configuration also affects interspecies dynamics due to differential vulnerability among species (Villard & Metzger, 2014). These effects may ultimately result in loss of biodiversity. Nevertheless, the implications of habitat fragmentation of biodiversity have so far been inadequately represented in the land use impact models of LCIA (Souza et al., 2015).

We identified suitable habitat fragmentation models for improving the representation of land use impacts in LCIA. Based on the wealth of literature from ecology and conservation biology – and taking into account spatial and temporal scales, as well as types of barriers and fragmentation impacts – we make recommendations for further development of characterisation factors for land fragmentation impacts on biodiversity.

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