Life cycle environmental impacts of vineyard in the south Portugal
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abstract
Agricultural activities have multiple negative impacts on the environment. In the wine sector, several studies have used the life cycle approach to identify and measure these environmental impacts. The main aim of this study was to determine the environmental impact of two vineyards located in southern Portugal, considering 1 kg of grape yield, using the life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology (ISO 14040). The system boundary studied was “from cradle to gate” including grape production and harvesting. The methodology included the use of GaBi software for the assessment of different impact categories (CML 2001 Methods), including the global warming potential (GWP), acidification potential (AP), eutrophication potential (EP) and abiotic depletion potential (AD). The results show that the contribution in the AP and EP categories were associated with the use of agricultural machinery, while the AD was mostly due to external inputs, namely the production of pesticides. On the other hand, the GWP category, received a very equitable contribution among all production processes. This study allowed for the identification of which production processes may contribute the most to the different
environmental impacts, thus prompting the identification of improvement opportunities for more sustainable production in the vineyards stages of the wine production.
This study received funding from COMPETE 2020 - Programa
Operacional Competitividade e Internacionalização (POCI-0145-FEDER-023360), Wine
WATERFootprint project. The authors would also like to thank the Foundation for
Science and Technology (FCT, Portugal) and FEDER under the PT2020 Program for the
financial support to CIMO UID/AGR/00690/2019. Our thanks must also go to the
farmers, companies and specialists in the wine sector for their kind collaboration in this
study, through the provision of relevant data and information.
