An applicability and functionality assessment of land use impact models: application of the LANCA in Emilia-Romagna (Italy)

This work aims to give a global evaluation of the LANCA model which was selected by the European Commission in the framework of the Product Environmental Footprint to assess the impacts due to land use change. The functionality and applicability of the model was assessed at a regional scale in Emilia-Romagna (ER), being the model designed to measure the impacts at national scale. Required data from regional datasets were collected for 8 soils representing the reference situation and for 4 corn-cultivated soils, these representing a permanent transformation; parameters were thus averaged to outline 2 representative land uses mean features. LANCA calculation structures and related assumptions have been transferred into a spreadsheet to compute the respective quality indicators and characterisation factors (CFs) for land use associated to the corn crops. Results show important discrepancies of the order of 10.000 times between national predicted and regional values. Results were compared with literature and a local sensitivity analysis was performed, the latter using input data value range in Emilia-Romagna and simulating different land use and soil texture class scenarios. Most influent parameters were isolated and the validity of their effects on calculated CFs were assessed. Finally, a new method based on NASA remote sensing activities was proposed for a more accurate estimate of the for biotic production: open-source NPP raster files at 500m resolution were used to estimate the annual biotic production for the selected soils. Main difficulties in local-scale application of the model were outlined, in terms of environmental relevance, scientific robustness, suitability and comparability.