Evaluating ecosystem services in the life cycle assessment of grassland-based dairy systems

The integration of ecosystem services (ESS) in life cycle assessment (LCA) poses two main challenges: (1) how to integrate ESS within LCA, and (2) how to quantify the delivery of ESS. Several approaches have been proposed to integrate ESS in LCA: using multiple functional units, allocation to ESS, system expansion and introducing additional indicators. Some ESS are already directly or indirectly covered in LCA impact categories, while others remain to be added. The methods SALCA-biodiversity, SALCA-soil quality and the newly developed SALCA-landscape aesthetics will be applied to assess the environmental impacts and ESS from three grassland-based dairy production systems in Switzerland.