Environmental Sustainability: Analysis, Allocation, and Assessment of Land Use for Sustainability

Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh PA

Investigators

Abstract

0932484 Matthews An inventory of land use in the United States based on publicly available data will be created that will assign the land used to produce commodities in the U.S. economy. These data will then be incorporated into a hybrid process - economic input-output life cycle assessment framework to evaluate the importance of land use across the supply chain of production. Unique challenges associated with the inclusion of land use in life cycle analysis will be considered, most importantly allocation issues. Completion of a land use inventory and development methods to accurately include land use in life cycle assessment will permit an in-depth analysis of land use for many sustainability research questions. The inventory and resulting data will be made available on the Internet so that it is accessible to other land use and sustainability researchers. A number of case studies using the newly created data set will be conducted to quantify the implications of land use change within the U.S. as well as globally. For these, the focus areas will be on increased use of biofuels production (to assess food versus fuel debates) and on the effects of urbanization by considering the total land footprint of metropolitan areas. This project will serve the environmental sustainability community by adding a relevant and significant category (land use) to the existing focus areas of energy, air and water emissions, and toxic releases. The project will develop course modules on land use sustainability that will be disseminated via the Internet.