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Incorporating Biogeochemical Cycles and Utilizing Complexity Theory for Sustainability Analysis

Singh, Shweta
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1345519020

Abstract Details

2012, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering.
Sustainability assessment is a multidisciplinary complex problem and requires techniques that can address the unique requirements of solving such complex issues. This dissertation addresses the complexity of problem by developing novel assessment techniques, inventory and methodologies for decision making. One of the major challenges today in sustainability assessment is decisions considering the coupled natural and human systems. Ecological systems support functioning of human-built systems by providing several ecosystem services. There has been tremendous degradation of these services over past decade which can be attributed to lack of accounting of these services in supporting the production of human systems. This led to the development of Ecologically Based Life Cycle Assessment (Eco-LCA) earlier, which accounts for the role of ecosystem services in Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) technique. However, the accounting method was limited to the easily quantifiable components such as energy resources, materials, some supporting services etc. This limitation motivated integration of bio-geochemical cycles with Eco-LCA in this work to account for the role of these cycles in supporting economic activities utilizing the Eco-LCA model. Specifically, the Carbon and Nitrogen cycles have been integrated with US economy and a life cycle inventory has been developed that can account for the role of different components of these cycles in LCA studies. The developed framework can be easily applied to other cycles such as phosphorus. Another limitation of several sustainability assessment techniques is lack of dynamic insights about stability or fragility of the systems under consideration. Such insights are useful in order to make decisions about sustainability of a system. This dissertation proposes new ways of deriving such insights from already available inventory for systems using network analysis techniques. For this, the tools of network analysis as utilized in complexity have been proposed. Metrics like indegree, outdegree, flow structure of resources, ascendency and reserve have been utilized for providing insight into system fragility of a life cycle network. Specifically, production chains for gasoline and corn-ethanol have been compared for system properties like resource propagation, fragility and controlling nodes in resource flows. Life cycle data quality and lack of data for ecosystem services pose great challenges in making sustainability decisions. These challenges have been addressed in this work by data rectification for improving the quality of already available data and proposing a new LCA approach termed as Qualitative Eco-LCA (qEco-LCA) that can utilize qualitative information about reliance on ecosystem services for decision making. Data rectification is based on earlier work of LCI rectification and is combined into an algorithm to include external information for improving LCI. Qualitative Eco-LCA (qEco-LCA) combines the World Resources Institute (WRIs) tool for ESR (Ecosystem Services Review) with Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Quality Function Deployment (QFD) to conduct LCA for services such as climate regulation, air quality regulation etc. which are difficult to quantify. The qEco-LCA approach will be able to capture the role of those ecosystem services which are function of multiple ecosystem components and are ignored by other LCA methods due to lack of metrics.
Bhavik R. Bakshi, PhD (Advisor)
James F. Rathman, PhD (Committee Member)
Michael Paulaitis, PhD (Committee Member)
Jay F. Martin, PhD (Committee Member)
343 p.
Engineering; Environmental Engineering; Environmental Management; Environmental Science; Sustainability; Systems Science
Sustainability Assessment; Biogeochemical Cycles; Network Theory; Ecosystem Services; Qualitative Decision Making

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Singh, S. (2012). Incorporating Biogeochemical Cycles and Utilizing Complexity Theory for Sustainability Analysis [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1345519020

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Singh, Shweta. Incorporating Biogeochemical Cycles and Utilizing Complexity Theory for Sustainability Analysis. 2012. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1345519020.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Singh, Shweta. "Incorporating Biogeochemical Cycles and Utilizing Complexity Theory for Sustainability Analysis." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2012. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1345519020

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

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© 2012, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.