Toward Better Biodiversity Impact Assessment of Agricultural Land Management through Life Cycle Assessment: A Systematic Review

Agricultural intensification has driven global biodiversity
loss
through land management change. However, there is no consensus on
assessing the biodiversity impacts of changes in land management practices
and intensity levels using life cycle assessment (LCA). This study
reviews 7 expert scoring-based (ESB) and 19 biodiversity indicator-based
(BIB) LCA methods used to assess biodiversity impacts, aiming to evaluate
their quality and identify research needs for incorporating land management
change in LCA. Overall, BIB methods outperformed ESB methods across
general criteria, especially in robustness (95% higher). BIB methods
assess biodiversity impacts based on land management intensity levels,
whereas ESB methods emphasize specific land management practices.
Neither approach fully captures biodiversity impacts across supply
chains. For future studies, it is advisable to (1) model the direct
(on-farm) impacts of land management change at the midpoint level;
(2) establish cause-effect relationships between key land management
practices and biodiversity indicators, while distinguishing between
direct (on-site) and indirect (off-site) biodiversity impacts resulting
from land management change; (3) characterize land-use intensity levels
with specific land management practices and include the positive impacts
from agroecological practices. This Review examines LCA methods for
biodiversity concerning land management practices and discusses improvements
to better account for the biodiversity impacts of agricultural land
management.