Description

This indicator measures the potential impact of acidifying pollutants through the LCA method. Acidifying pollutants have a wide variety of impacts on soil, groundwater, surface water, biological organisms, ecosystem, and materials.

The major acidifying pollutants considered are SO2-, NOx, and NH3.

Indicator interpretation

Higher values indicate larger negative impacts on the environment.

Scale definition

New Zealand study: average of three scenarios at dairy farm scale (scenario 1 = low input, scenario 2 = N fertilizer and scenario 3 = N fertilizer + maize silage) using “CML method” to calculate the impacts and eco-invent mostly for the Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) (calculating the emissions) (Claudine et al., 2009) or 0.00745 kg SO2-eq/kg of milk.

Reference values Reference

values

 Scales Dexi

interpretation

 References
0.00745 kg SO2-/kg (New Zealand) Average of 3

scenarios

 70.8 kg SO2-

/ha

 < 0.009 Very low + (Basset-Mens 2009)
0.0180    kg               SO2-/kg conventional (Sweden in 93.5 kg SO2-

/ha

 [0.009; 0.01[ Low (Cederberg Mattsson, 2000)
0.0158    kg               SO2-/kg conventional (Sweden in 45.6 kg SO2-

/ha

 [0.01; 0.015[ Medium
0.0095    kg    SO2-/kg         in conventional

(Netherlands)

 74.2 kg SO2-

/ha

 [0.015; 0.02] High (Thomassen            et            al., 2008b)
0.0108    kg    SO2-/kg         in organic (Netherlands) 61.0 kg SO2-

/ha

 > 0.02 Very high

Based on three LCA studies “cradle to farm-gate” of dairy farm using CML method and mostly eco-invent database.

Check with other LCA studies covering a good diversity of system:

Terrestrial acidification: from 0.0240 to 0.0298 kg SO2-/kg of milk (Drews et al., 2020) Terrestrial acidification: from 0.0081 to 0.019 kg SO2-/kg of milk (De Vries and de Boer, 2010)

References

Emission calculation: Koch, P., Salou, T., 2016. AGRIBALYSE®: Rapport Méthodologique – Version 1.3. Ed ADEME, Angers, France, p. 343p.

Characterization factor: CML-IA characterization method