In a recently published study, researchers offer a new tool to compare how different crops affect the environment in different regions.
Named PLANTdex, the tool assesses the environmental impact of a crop by considering five key indicators — greenhouse gas emissions, freshwater biodiversity loss, marine biodiversity loss, land biodiversity loss, and water resource depletion — study co-author Mark Jwaideh, nature data and risk analytics lead at the University of Oxford, told Mongabay by email.
For each crop, PLANTdex combines these five indicators into one score at a high resolution of 9 by 9 kilometers (5.6 by 5.6 miles).
“This granularity enables the identification of specific regions where crop production is more or less environmentally impactful, facilitating targeted interventions and policy decisions,” Jwaideh said. “This approach enables stakeholders to pinpoint environmental hotspots to make informed decisions on crop commodity sourcing or where better management is required.”
archived (Wayback Machine):
does anyone understand the plantdex data? what’s an arcmin?
I briefly was disappointed when I found poore-nemecek 2018 in the references, but it was just in the main section, and was not incorporated into their data. they even went out of their was to talk shit on LCA studies.
I am hopeful this is both good and useful science but I still don’t quite understand how they gathered the data, or even what the data says.
