Impacts of Land Use

The scientific discussion on impacts of land use tries to answer the basic question of how to measure the quality of different ways of land occupation. Lindeijer distinguishes three basic types of assessment for land use impacts, acknowledging that they may be overlapping to some part [20]. These types are the Junctional approach, land use classes, and key indicators. 

The Junctional approach, as its name indicates, is based on different natural functions of land. Examples of functions are groundwater protection, habitat resource function, or human resort function. For these functions, scientific measures have been developed, for example, species density as a measure of habitat resource function. As these functions may be highly variable and dependent on regional conditions, generic systems for operationalization in LCIA have been developed [20]. 

As to the approach of land use classes, different classification systems have been proposed, based, for example, on the lUCN classification of five land use classes ranging from natural systems to systems degraded by pollution and loss of soil or vegetation. The respective classification systems are derived from the discipline of landscape ecology they account for the naturalness of land and are based on the so-called concept of hemeroby [21]. 

The development of key indicators aims at a single score indicator to measure effects of land use, which-as pointed out for single-score indicators in general-requires the use of weighting factors. Lindeijer presents several sets of weighting factors for land use classes as well as other approaches for aggregation [20]. One of these is the so-called PAF concept applied in ecoindicator 99. It measures the potentially affected fraction of species, that is, the part of the total munber of species in an area which is potentially affected in terms of laboratory test effects. 

For the implementation of a land use category in the ISO methodological framework of LCI, several category indicators have been proposed. Mila i Canals et al. present an overview of currently used indicators of land use quality, differentiating between three impact pathways impacts on biodiversity, on biotic production potential, and on ecological soil quality [19]. They also discuss which kind of information is needed from the inventory to apply the respective indicator, which is considerably more than the simple information for occupation interventions. Mila i Canals et al. [19] also define a transformation impact which represents the difference between a reference state, where land use would not have been changed compared to the actual changes in the system under study. 

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Table 3. Matrix for Estimating Interactive Erosional Impact of Land-use Activities with Terrain Properties of Geology Land Slope, MolaUa River Basin, Oregon ...

The extent of the impact of land-use changes on runoff processes is a subject of controversy [56, 57]. In principle, however, it is safe to say that the type of vegetation, its spatial distribution and in particular the soil depth or composition can exert a strong influence on the mnoff regime in an (alpine) catchment area. 

Fig. 7 Potential impact of land-use changes on selected water cycle elements and runoff processes (acc. to [55], amended)...

Table 1. Impact of land use methods on farm and nature development in the Rift Valley / Kenya since the 50ties...

Rajagopal R. 1978. Impact of land use on ground water quality in the Grand Traverse Bay Region of Michigan. J Environ Qual 7(l) 93-98. 

Douglas I (1996) The impact of land-use changes, especially logging, shifting cultivation, mining and urbanization on sediment yields in tropical Southeast... 

Specific Methodological Aspects fi)r LCAfor Biobased Products 1199 9.3.2.3 Impacts of Land Use... 

Yan X, Inderwildi OR, King DA (2010) Biofuels and synthetic fuels in the US and China a review of well-to-wheel energy use and greenhouse gas emissions with the impact of land-use change. Energ Environ Sci 3(2) 190-197... 

Helder de Sousa Andrade (geomorphology impact of land use on water resources (water courses, rivers and lakes) climate variability impacts on agricidture). Department of Geology, Faculty of Sciences, Agostinho Neto University (UAN), Luanda... 

Delucchi, M., 2011. A conceptual framework for estimating the climate impacts of land-use change due to energy crop programs. Biomass and Bioenergy 35 (6), 2337-2360. 

Erosion/Deposition Impact Matrix and Map. Methods applied in this semi-quantitative assessment involved mapping depositional features using high and low altitude imagery, numerical ranking of land use activity impacts and construction of problem matrixes. The information generated in these first steps were applied to the Universal Soil Loss Equation (15-16),... 

What is the impact of land surface processes (land use included) at local, regional, and global scales on the formation of carbon sources and sinks in the present What was it in the past and what is it likely to be in the future ... 

Similarly, study is needed of the impact of large-scale biomass growth for feedstock for its impact on land use and any effect on nutrient runoff and eutrophication secondary to fertilizer demand (NRC, 2000). 

Other aggregation methodologies have also been proposed in the literature. One approach is based on thermodynamics materials, fuels, and wastes can all be expressed as the total consumption or loss of exergy, or energy available to do work (Bakshi and Fiksel, 2003). Alternatively, the metrics may be expressed in terms of land use, or ecological footprint. Land use impacts of energy sources and common household materials have been reported (Chambers et al., 2000). It is unclear, however, whether proxies such as exergy and land use adequately represent overall sustainability impacts. 

The selection of sites for monitoring must take into account the three-dimensional nature of the groundwater body, flow characteristics, variability of land use, ground-water vulnerability and the potential receptors. All these should have been identified in file conceptual model. An effective network of monitoring sites will be one that is able to detect tlie impacts from pressures and the evolution in groundwater quality along flow paths within the groundwater body. 

During recent decades, considerable areas of contaminated land have been identified and many of these have been dealt with, so that they can be used safely for new development or returned to a semi-natural condition. However, much contaminated land is either not yet identified or is described inadequately. Furthermore, knowledge is incomplete about the impacts of land contamination on humans and natural systems. 

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