Review of land use impact methodologies

A review was performed of existing approaches on land use methods for LCA. Two main questions arise: how does land occupation relate to (irreversible) land changes, and what indicators are to be used to describe land use impacts. Most approaches aim at a single or limited number of indices for land use impacts, for data availability reasons. Vascular plant species density is the most common basis for an indicator. Methods using many more indicators may be seen as future sophistications, when data is available over the whole life cycle. For silviculture and agriculture crops multi-indicator scores may be applicable now to compare management techniques. Land use efficiency measured by m2.y is presently seen as the inventory step of land occupation impact assessment, but may also be a separate issue. Land management techniques in fact influence long-term changes and should be assessed as such, or not quantified at all. Further discussion and harmonisation is however required.