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A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) study was carried out to assess the environmental profile of the main Sardinian dairy sheep farming systems, with the scope to provide a detailed and robust baseline for the identification of effective mitigation solutions at farm level and to develop environmental strategies at regional scale. Both product- and area-based functional units (FUs) were adopted, considering sixteen impact categories and soil carbon sequestration estimates as well. Water Use, Climate Change, Land Use, Ecotoxicity Freshwater, Marine Eutrophication and Fossils Resource Use resulted the main impact categories, cumulatively contributing over 80% of the total environmental impact (single score). Environmental performances significantly varied according to the geo-pedological traits of the different sheep milk production areas and were driven by the farming systems’ structure and production level. The group of farms located in less fertile areas showed significantly worse environmental performance per kg of normalized milk for the impact categories Climate Change and Land Use, whereas no significant differences were observed for the remaining main impact categories. Considering the area-based FU, this farm group resulted less impacting for all main categories compared to the group of farms located in more plain and productive soils, with a significantly lower impact observed for Marine Eutrophication and Fossils Resource Use. Regardless of the FU used, feed supply management represented a key area of improvement, and soil carbon sequestration impact compensated the high GHG emission intensity of grassland-based farms despite the limited nutritional value of natural pasture. Regional strategies should be based on ecosystem services optimization and eco-innovative solutions tailored according to both the specific geo-pedological conditions and the production level of each farming system.

Unsustainable food supply chains are sources of relevant environmental impacts and strongly contribute to the depletion of non-renewable resources. Ecolabelling is one of the measures for increasing market awareness of the sustainability of a product and encourage the implementation of low-input practices along the food production system. Made Green in Italy (MGI) scheme is an initiative based on the PEF method and aimed to reward Made in Italy products with high environmental profile. A screening study was conducted on four Sardinian dairy plants to develop an experimental MGI application on the hard sheep milk cheese supply chain, using Pecorino Romano PDO as reference product. Sheep milk phase resulted the main contributor for all relevant impact categories (over 94%). Benchmark score (1.33E-05 Pt) was calculated adding the normalized and weighted values of the 3 main relevant impact categories (Climate Change, Land Use and Water Scarcity). Three performance classes were defined considering the best and the worst values of life cycle processes: upper threshold was equal to 1.62E-05 Pt and lower threshold was equal to 1.17E-05 Pt. The relevant sheep milk impact highlighted the crucial role of sheep farming systems for improving the environmental footprint of the Pecorino Romano PDO.

We applied a geographical information system analysis to reclassify and characterize anthropic buildings based on structure density and area covered, land type, and proximity to wildlands able to originate intense wildfires and spot fires. The methodology was carried out in the 93,000 km2 Italy-France Maritime cooperation area (which includes the Regions of Sardinia, Tuscany, and Liguria, in Italy, and Corsica, and Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, in France). We produced a 100-m raster dataset that characterizes and maps medium-high anthropic presence, wildland-anthropic areas, dispersed anthropic areas, and non-anthropic zones, in the whole study area. The study allowed to highlight variations in wildland anthropic interfaces among and within Regions as a function of anthropic presence and types and the surrounding wildlands. The spatial dataset provided with this work represents a valuable contribution to support landscape and urban planning and inform strategies to limit wildfire impacts nearby anthropic areas.

Highlights • Extensification of dairy sheep systems provides an environmental benefit when soil C sequestration is considered. • Extensification of dairy sheep systems determines lower environmental impact per hectare of utilized agricultural area. • Enteric methane emissions are the main source of GHG emissions of the sheep milk life cycle. • Carbon sequestration in permanent grasslands can considerably contribute to climate change mitigation. Abstract A life cycle assessment (LCA) study of a transition from semi-intensive to semi-extensive Mediterranean dairy sheep farm suggests that the latter has a strong potential for offsetting greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions through the soil C sequestration (Cseq) in permanent grasslands. The extensification process shows clear environmental advantage when emission intensity is referred to the area-based functional unit (FU). Several LCA studies reported that extensive livestock systems have greater GHG emissions per mass of product than intensive one, due to their lower productivity. However, these studies did not account for soil Cseq of temporary and permanent grasslands, that have a strong potential to partly mitigate the GHG balance of ruminant production systems. Our LCA study was carried out considering the transition from a semi-intensive (SI) towards a semi-extensive (SE) production system, adopted in a dairy sheep farm located in North-Western Sardinia (Italy). Impact scope included enteric methane emissions, feed production, on-farm energy use and transportation, infrastructures as well as the potential C sink arising from soil Cseqwith respect to the emission intensity. In order to provide a more comprehensive analysis, we used the following FUs: 1 kg of fat and protein corrected milk (FPCM) and 1 ha of utilised agricultural area (UAA). We observed that the extensification of production system determined contrasting environmental effects when using different FUs accounting for soil Cseq. When soil Cseq in emission intensity estimate was included, we observed slightly lower values of GHG emissions per kg of FPCM in the SI production system (from 3.37 to 3.12 kg CO2 equivalents – CO2-eq), whereas a greater variation we observed in the SE one (from 3.54 to 2.90 kg CO2-eq). Considering 1 ha of UAA as FU and including the soil Cseq, the emission intensity in SI moved from 6,257 to 5,793 kg CO2-eq, whereas values varied from 4,020 to 3,299 kg CO2-eq in SE. These results indicated that the emission intensity from semi-extensive Mediterranean dairy sheep farms can be considerably reduced through the soil Cseq, although its measurement is influenced by the models used in the estimation.