Spatially explicit fate factors of phosphorous emissions to freshwater at the global scale

Abstract

Purpose The location of a phosphorus emission can strongly affect its expected fate in freshwater. To date, in Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), fate factors for phosphorus emissions have been derived for continents or large countries and had limited spatial resolution. These fate factors do not account sufficiently for local variations and are not applicable globally. In this paper, fate factors for freshwater eutrophication are derived for phosphorus emissions to freshwater on a global scale with a half-degree resolution. Methods For this purpose, a new global fate model for phosphorus has been developed on a half-degree resolution. The removal processes taken into account are grid-specific advection, phosphorus retention and water use. Aggregated fate factors based on archetypes and on administrative units are presented. Results and discussion The derived fate factors represent the persistence of phosphorus in the freshwater environment. The typical fate factor of phosphorus emissions to freshwater is 10 days and can vary more than 2 orders of magnitude among the grid cells (the 5th and 95th percentile are 0.8 and 310 days, respectively). Advection is the dominant removal process of phosphorus in freshwater (67.5%), followed by retention (27.6%) and water use (4.9%). Conclusions The results demonstrate inclusion of information on the location of phosphorus emissions to freshwater can improve the comparative power of the fate factor implementation in LCAs. The fate factors enable consistent assessment and comparison of freshwater eutrophication impacts at different locations across the globe. © Springer-Verlag 2012.