Application of integrated LCA-GIS model in the agricultural sector: A brief overview

Abstract

Abstract Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Geographic Information System (GIS) are two different and complementary tools. LCA is used to evaluate only environmental consequences and cannot be employed to assess spatial environmental impacts, while GIS is a decision-making spatial tool capable of restoring, retrieving, analyzing, modelling, and mapping large areas with a huge volume of spatial data. The Integrated LCA-GIS model is a framework that aims at addressing the unsuitable match in spatial firmness/resolution of LCA. This paper conducted a brief overview of the application of the LCA-GIS model in the agricultural sector to investigate and clarify the current situation of the technique, especially in the areas of environmental assessment, sustainability assessment, energy-environment assessment, and qualitative assessment in terms of system boundaries, functional unit and impact categories in the agricultural sector. Cradle-to-gate system boundary was used in all the studies reviewed and this shows that there was a lack of depth analysis in evaluating the environmental impacts of the whole agricultural process. It is also observed in this paper that, few impact categories were assessed and no single damage category was evaluated, it further revealed that the LCA-GIS methodology for sustainability assessment does not evaluate socio-economic factors thus leading to the establishment of Regional Sustainability Assessment Methodology (RSAM). This paper recommends the use of a cradle-to-grave system boundary thus will help in an in-depth analysis of evaluating the environmental impacts of any agricultural product; evaluation of all the impact and damage categories and development of a single software that integrates LCA with GIS that applies to any research field.