Title
Accounting for time-dependent changes in GHG emissions in the Ribeiro appellation (NW Spain): Are land use changes an important driver?
Date Issued
01 August 2015
Access level
metadata only access
Resource Type
journal article
Author(s)
Publisher(s)
Elsevier Ltd
Abstract
Land use changes (LUCs) constitute a crucial source of environmental impact in production systems, which are mostly associated with greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This circumstance is especially important for the agricultural sector, since these imply an important proportion of the total GHG emissions occurring worldwide. Wine and grape production is a key sector in Spain, representing the largest surface area at European level. In the past decades, important wine related LUCs have been observed due to changes in farming methods/type, number of Denominations of Origin, and the establishment of larger wineries that have enhanced exports. The current study presents a temporally based Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) study of the Ribeiro appellation in NW Spain, in which the gradual changes in the land use, as well as the technological improvements are analyzed in detail in order to understand how the environmental profile of this specific wine producing area has shifted in the past two decades (i.e., from 1990 to 2009). On the one hand, phenomena such as afforestation and agricultural intensification are analyzed throughout the appellation to estimate the impact due to GHG emissions linked to LUCs, based on IPCC standards. On the other hand, trends linked to technological improvements, operational changes, such as changes in the use and management of plant protection agents or fertilizers or the change in the energy sources for machinery on the vineyards, were assessed in detail.
Start page
215
End page
227
Volume
51
Language
English
OCDE Knowledge area
Biotecnología ambiental
Horticultura, Viticultura
Subjects
Scopus EID
2-s2.0-84937840255
Source
Environmental Science and Policy
ISSN of the container
14629011
Sponsor(s)
The authors belong to the Galician Competitive Research Group GRC 2013-032 . Dr. Ian Vázquez-Rowe would like to thank the Galician Government for financial support (I2C postdoctoral student grants programme).
Sources of information:
Directorio de Producción Científica
Scopus