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A joint use of life cycle assessment and emergy analysis for sustainability evaluation of an intensive agro-system in China

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Abstract

Sustainability assessing on agricultural production systems has developed rapidly over the last two decades, and various models are formulated from different perspectives. However, a comprehensive evaluation model that involved both efficiency of system output and environmental impact has not yet been fully explored. Here, we combined the emergy method with life cycle assessment to construct a coupled model for sustainability evaluation, taking an intensive winter wheat–summer maize cropping system in Huantai County, China, as a case study, which was examined before and after the Project of Soil Testing and Fertilizer Recommendation (PSTFR). Our results showed that compared with 1996, the sustainability index (SI) of this cropping system in 2012 increased by 50.37%, indicating that the sustainability of the target system was further enhanced. The emergy yield ratio (EYR) increased by 21.8% in 2012, while the potential damage to human health (HH) and the potential damage to ecosystem health (ESH) in 2012 were lower than those in 1996, by 22.38% and 15.17%, respectively; and the environmental impact index (EII) decreased by 19.00%. Though there was a remarkable improvement in the SI, the proportion of irrigation water in total emergy input was still as high as 46.0%, followed by nitrogen fertilizer, accounting for 23.60%. According to the coupled model, reducing irrigation water and electricity consumption, and reducing the application of nitrogen fertilizer, could contribute the most to further improvements in sustainability. Furthermore, this novel coupled model has high potential to measure sustainability of an agro-system, while needs further improvement and modification in the future.

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Acknowledgements

This work is supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (No. 2016YDF0800906). The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the donor organization.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Resources and Environmental Sciences, China Agricultural University, Beijing, 100193, China

    Yichao Wang & Guishen Zhao

  2. State Environmental Protection Key Laboratory of Urban Ecological Environment Simulation and Protection, South China Institute of Environmental Sciences, Ministry of Ecology and Environment of China, Guangzhou, 510530, China

    Yichao Wang

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  1. Yichao Wang
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Correspondence to Guishen Zhao.

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Wang, Y., Zhao, G. A joint use of life cycle assessment and emergy analysis for sustainability evaluation of an intensive agro-system in China. Environ Dev Sustain 24, 12019–12035 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10668-021-01929-5

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