{"id":{"repo_id":"uiuc","oai_identifier":"oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/105264"},"canonical_url":"https://search.dev.ndltd.org/etd/uiuc/oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/105264","repository":{"repo_id":"uiuc","name":"University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign","base_url":"https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh"},"display":{"title":"Evaluation of life cycle assessment methodology for multiple agroecosystems","abstract":"Industrialized agricultural production of annual row crops, such as corn and soybeans, is a major contributor to several environmental problems, including climate change and eutrophication of waterways. Land use transition to multifunctional woody polyculture (MWP) agroecosystems has been proposed as a potential strategy for mitigating these harmful impacts while still yielding high value crops. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has the potential to meaningfully capture these impacts, enabling improved decision making in agricultural management. However, due to the differences in the life cycles of various agroecosystems, LCA methodology must be evaluated across multiple agroecosystems to ensure best practices in evaluating these systems. This study evaluated the importance of various LCA methodological decisions - including system boundary and functional unit selection, collection of uncertain inventory data, and modelling of ecosystem services – across ten agroecosystems, corn-soy rotation, four monoculture orchards, and five multifunctional woody polycultures. Environmental impacts across all agroecosystems were found to be dominated by emissions from the burning of fuel for agricultural machinery, and from the production and use of fertilizers and pesticides. The majority of these impacts are associated with the production phase of all crops’ life cycles, and suggestions are made for when all phases, including the nursery, transportation, establishment, production, and destruction of crops must be included in LCA. Results suggest that environmental impacts are more strongly related to management decisions, such as chemical application rate, than crop selection, but additional work is necessary to fully integrate the ecological variation of agroecosystems into a quantitative framework such as LCA.","abstract_html":"Industrialized agricultural production of annual row crops, such as corn and soybeans, is a major contributor to several environmental problems, including climate change and eutrophication of waterways. Land use transition to multifunctional woody polyculture (MWP) agroecosystems has been proposed as a potential strategy for mitigating these harmful impacts while still yielding high value crops. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has the potential to meaningfully capture these impacts, enabling improved decision making in agricultural management. However, due to the differences in the life cycles of various agroecosystems, LCA methodology must be evaluated across multiple agroecosystems to ensure best practices in evaluating these systems. This study evaluated the importance of various LCA methodological decisions - including system boundary and functional unit selection, collection of uncertain inventory data, and modelling of ecosystem services – across ten agroecosystems, corn-soy rotation, four monoculture orchards, and five multifunctional woody polycultures. Environmental impacts across all agroecosystems were found to be dominated by emissions from the burning of fuel for agricultural machinery, and from the production and use of fertilizers and pesticides. The majority of these impacts are associated with the production phase of all crops’ life cycles, and suggestions are made for when all phases, including the nursery, transportation, establishment, production, and destruction of crops must be included in LCA. Results suggest that environmental impacts are more strongly related to management decisions, such as chemical application rate, than crop selection, but additional work is necessary to fully integrate the ecological variation of agroecosystems into a quantitative framework such as LCA.","abstract_has_math":false,"creators":["Goller, Ian"],"institution":"University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign","degree_name":"M.S.","degree_level":"Thesis","degree_discipline":"Environ Engr in Civil Engr","degree_department":null,"school":null,"contributors":["Guest, Jeremy S."],"advisors":[],"committee_chairs":[],"committee_members":[],"year":2019,"date_issued":"2019-08-23T20:48:26Z","date_published":"2019-08-23T20:48:26Z","updated_at":"2026-07-22T22:24:44Z","subjects":["Agroforestry, Multifunctional Woody Polyculture, Life Cycle Assessment, LCA, Perennial, Agriculture, Ecosystem Services, Polyculture"],"languages":["en"],"rights":["Copyright 2019 Ian Goller"],"rights_urls":[],"identifier_entries":[]},"links":{"outbound_url":"http://hdl.handle.net/2142/105264","outbound_label":"Handle","outbound_source":"dc:identifier"},"metadata_groups":[{"id":"people","label":"People","entries":[{"key":"dc:contributor","label":"Contributor","values":["Guest, Jeremy S."]},{"key":"dc:creator","label":"Author","values":["Goller, Ian"]}]},{"id":"academic_context","label":"Academic Context","entries":[{"key":"dc:date","label":"Dc Date","values":["2019-08-23T20:48:26Z","2021-08-24T09:15:11Z","2019-04-25","2019-05"]},{"key":"dc:type","label":"Dc Type","values":["text"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_discipline","label":"Discipline","values":["Environ Engr in Civil Engr"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_level","label":"Degree Level","values":["Thesis"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_name","label":"Degree Name","values":["M.S."]},{"key":"thesis:institution_name","label":"Thesis Institution Name","values":["University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign"]}]},{"id":"subjects_keywords","label":"Subjects and Keywords","entries":[{"key":"dc:subject","label":"Dc Subject","values":["Agroforestry, Multifunctional Woody Polyculture, Life Cycle Assessment, LCA, Perennial, Agriculture, Ecosystem Services, Polyculture"]}]},{"id":"language_rights","label":"Language and Rights","entries":[{"key":"dc:language","label":"Dc Language","values":["en"]},{"key":"dc:rights","label":"Dc Rights","values":["Copyright 2019 Ian Goller"]}]},{"id":"identifiers","label":"Identifiers","entries":[{"key":"dc:identifier","label":"Identifier","values":["http://hdl.handle.net/2142/105264"]}]},{"id":"additional","label":"Additional Metadata","entries":[{"key":"dc:description","label":"Description","values":["Industrialized agricultural production of annual row crops, such as corn and soybeans, is a major contributor to several environmental problems, including climate change and eutrophication of waterways. Land use transition to multifunctional woody polyculture (MWP) agroecosystems has been proposed as a potential strategy for mitigating these harmful impacts while still yielding high value crops. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has the potential to meaningfully capture these impacts, enabling improved decision making in agricultural management. However, due to the differences in the life cycles of various agroecosystems, LCA methodology must be evaluated across multiple agroecosystems to ensure best practices in evaluating these systems. This study evaluated the importance of various LCA methodological decisions - including system boundary and functional unit selection, collection of uncertain inventory data, and modelling of ecosystem services – across ten agroecosystems, corn-soy rotation, four monoculture orchards, and five multifunctional woody polycultures. Environmental impacts across all agroecosystems were found to be dominated by emissions from the burning of fuel for agricultural machinery, and from the production and use of fertilizers and pesticides. The majority of these impacts are associated with the production phase of all crops’ life cycles, and suggestions are made for when all phases, including the nursery, transportation, establishment, production, and destruction of crops must be included in LCA. Results suggest that environmental impacts are more strongly related to management decisions, such as chemical application rate, than crop selection, but additional work is necessary to fully integrate the ecological variation of agroecosystems into a quantitative framework such as LCA.","Submission published under a 24 month embargo labeled 'Closed Access', the embargo will last until 2021-05-01","The student, Ian Goller, accepted the attached license on 2019-04-25 at 09:54.","The student, Ian Goller, submitted this Thesis for approval on 2019-04-25 at 09:59.","This Thesis was approved for publication on 2019-04-25 at 15:03.","DSpace SAF Submission Ingestion Package generated from Vireo submission #13904 on 2019-08-22 at 16:23:55","Made available in DSpace on 2019-08-23T20:48:26Z (GMT). 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Land use transition to multifunctional woody polyculture (MWP) agroecosystems has been proposed as a potential strategy for mitigating these harmful impacts while still yielding high value crops. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has the potential to meaningfully capture these impacts, enabling improved decision making in agricultural management. However, due to the differences in the life cycles of various agroecosystems, LCA methodology must be evaluated across multiple agroecosystems to ensure best practices in evaluating these systems. This study evaluated the importance of various LCA methodological decisions - including system boundary and functional unit selection, collection of uncertain inventory data, and modelling of ecosystem services – across ten agroecosystems, corn-soy rotation, four monoculture orchards, and five multifunctional woody polycultures. Environmental impacts across all agroecosystems were found to be dominated by emissions from the burning of fuel for agricultural machinery, and from the production and use of fertilizers and pesticides. The majority of these impacts are associated with the production phase of all crops’ life cycles, and suggestions are made for when all phases, including the nursery, transportation, establishment, production, and destruction of crops must be included in LCA. Results suggest that environmental impacts are more strongly related to management decisions, such as chemical application rate, than crop selection, but additional work is necessary to fully integrate the ecological variation of agroecosystems into a quantitative framework such as LCA.","Submission published under a 24 month embargo labeled 'Closed Access', the embargo will last until 2021-05-01","The student, Ian Goller, accepted the attached license on 2019-04-25 at 09:54.","The student, Ian Goller, submitted this Thesis for approval on 2019-04-25 at 09:59.","This Thesis was approved for publication on 2019-04-25 at 15:03.","DSpace SAF Submission Ingestion Package generated from Vireo submission #13904 on 2019-08-22 at 16:23:55","Made available in DSpace on 2019-08-23T20:48:26Z (GMT). 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