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Food loss and waste (FLW) is a major challenge to food system sustainability, including aquatic foods. Few data exist on aquatic FLW outside of small-scale fisheries, with major gaps in aquaculture species that make up half of global production. We investigated aquatic FLW in the food supply of the United States (US), the largest importer of aquatic food globally. We show that there are significant differences in FLW among species, production technology, origin, and stage of supply chain. We estimate that the total FLW was 22.7%, significantly lower than the 50% earlier reported in the literature, illustrating the importance of applying a disaggregated approach. Production losses from imports contribute over a quarter of total FLW, which strongly illustrates the importance of implementing systems approaches and multinational efforts to reduce FLW. The findings inform prioritization of solutions, including areas of needed innovations, government incentives, policy change, infrastructure and equity.

There is a gap in information in the literature regarding the energy and water embodied is seafood, especially wild catch fisheries. This work draws on primary and secondary data to assess, through a life cycle approach, the energy and water consumed to catch and process wild sockeye salmon in Bristol Bay, Alaska (USA). The Bristol Bay sockeye salmon fishery is a very remote wild catch fishery. All material inputs and labor are either barged or flown in from other parts of Alaska, and the lower U.S. states. In addition, a large monitoring and enforcement effort by the State of Alaska is conducted to sustainably manage the fishery. We therefore expanded the system boundary to include energy and water for commuting laborer's and regulators to depict the system within a wider context. Structured interviews were conducted to elicit information from fishers and processors related to their use of water and energy and to ascertain potentials for reducing energy and water demand of the fishery. The energy associated with fishing and processing sockeye ranges between 24.6 and 33.8 MJ kg−1 with fishing effort accounting for 43% of the total energy embodied in products. The water embodied in final sockeye salmon products ranged between 10 and 23 L/kg, mainly the result of processing and packaging. Combined, labor transport and fishery management contributed 8% to the embodied energy in sockeye products, while contributing less that 1% of the water embodied in sockeye products. While not insignificant, the energy costs of fishery management are inconsequential and should provide adequate justification for continued sustainable management and forceful information for consumer choice. The combination of governmental regulations and the remote location results in few opportunities for lowering energy and water demand of this already efficient fishery.

Unidad de excelencia María de Maeztu MdM-2015-0552 The linear path "extraction-production-consumption-waste", imposed by humans to natural ecosystems, where all material flows are instead circular, has become unsustainable. Understanding the potential value of some of these "by-products", in order to exploit them effectively in a biorefinery perspective, may help overcoming resource shortages and decrease environmental impacts. This study investigates energy and resource restoration from animal by-products. The slaughterhouse waste undergoes a rendering process to separate residual meal and fat. The latter is combusted in a co-generation plant to produce electricity and heat. The process is carefully assessed using Emergy Accounting approach with the aim of evaluating benefits and environmental load of the process considering the advantages achieved compared with the demand for ecosystem services and natural capital depletion. Moreover, the case aims at exploring three different methodological assumptions referring to the upstream burdens carried by the waste management system, proposing a modified exergy-based allocation rule. The electricity generated shows performances in terms of Unit Emergy Values ranging between 2.7E+05 sej/J, 2.2E+06 sej/J and 3.1E+07 sej/J among the different cases investigated, comparable to power from fossil fuels and renewables sources, and it provides an environmentally sound alternative to conventional waste disposal.

Catfish is the largest aquaculture sector in the U.S., and there is no peer-reviewed lifecycle analysis characterizing the sector's environmental footprint. This study estimates energy and water demand per kg of catfish, based on analysis of primary data collected from businesses involved in catfish farming, hatcheries, feed mills, and processing. Further, it describes business operator perceptions of potential strategies to reduce usage. We found that direct energy inputs accounted for 49% of energy usage, while feed production, especially crop production to produce feed ingredients, comprised 39% and indirect inputs comprised 12% of usage. The largest direct energy demand came from pond aeration. Among water uses, direct water inputs, particularly for filling ponds after evaporation and harvesting, comprised the largest share (59%). Water for feed production comprised another 40%. Interviewees discussed current and potential strategies to reduce energy and water use, including automatic aerators with sensors, improved equipment, rainwater capture, and alternative harvesting practices. Shifts in crop production could also reduce catfish embodied resources. Incentives to offset costs would increase adoption. In sum, this study provides the most comprehensive exploration to date of the energy and water footprint of the largest U.S. aquaculture sector and identifies multiple opportunities that could improve the industry's resource use.

International trade patterns can be seen as ways to redistribute natural resources and manufactured products, by means of convergence and divergence pathways, in support of production and consumption processes worldwide. By making needed resources to potential users (individuals and economies) trade acts as a driver of resource extraction, processing, degradation, especially if this is facilitated by market dynamics in which prices are determined by contingent factors that have no links to the environmental dynamics of resource generation and do not match the real quality of natural capital and ecosystems services involved. A fair trade relationship should take these aspects into proper account, in so promoting additional criteria for resource value and, as a consequence, towards efficient resource use and cleaner production processes. A comprehensive cost and benefit evaluation to consider the economic and ecological impacts is therefore a much needed prerequisite for a balanced trade relationship. To conduct this evaluation, we firstly choose the trade data of China with South Africa, Sudan, Algeria, Nigeria, Egypt and Morocco in the years 2001, 2004, 2008 and 2012 as sample set. Then we apply the emergy accounting approach to the international trade dynamic between China and above selected African countries to quantify the exchange of natural capital and ecosystem services among partners (including resources that support know-how and technology exchange), as well as to identify benefits and compensation measures that may increase trade balance and equity via the prevention of uncompensated resource exploitation. By accounting for the environmental support embodied in traded resources and their capability to support an economic process, the emergy approach applied in this study provides a complementary tool to economic evaluation, which enables a more comprehensive understanding of trade, beyond the monetary terms of trade. In terms of the total emergy exchange, the investigated African countries (with the exception of South Africa and Sudan) receive more emergy from China over the investigated period, which appears to suggest a reversal of the typical trend in which industrialized economies exploit African countries and return small or no benefit to their economies. However, the composition of the emergy trade indicates that China's import from Africa is mainly composed of primary products, whereas manufactured products dominate its export. This composition is likely to promote the Chinese economy (supporting resource processing and jobs), as well as increase the lifestyle of the wealthy fractions of the African population as a result of increased access to consumer goods; however, in turn, it may contribute to heavier pollution in China and certainly does not favor the development of local industry in Africa. Thus, more balanced import and export relations and trade structure that simultaneously involves human and natural capital will be helpful to construct a cooperative relationship.

Due to different resource endowment, geographical features, culture and population sizes, different regions are facing different challenges and therefore need to adopt different strategies toward sustainable development. China’s Eastern, Central and Western provinces are taking different policies on international trade in order to boost their economy. This paper tries to investigate to what extent a province receives a trade advantage and the corresponding environmental resource flows by employing an emergy accounting method for the period of 1993–2012. Three emergy trade indicators (Exchange Emergy Ratio, Emergy Benefit Ratio and Opportunity Ratio) were calculated along with conventional monetary indicators, to describe the benefits and losses in trade over the investigated period. The results show that the total trade volume of each province increased, but the trajectory of growth has a clear regional disparity. Eastern provinces gained economic advantages during the investigated period, while western provinces did not. The key finding is that benefits in terms of resource availability and work potential are not always in line with monetary advantages. Foreign trade partners received more advantages than their Chinese counterparts although Eastern Chinese provinces performed much better than both Central and Western Chinese provinces. Policy suggestions are then raised so that more sustainable trade policies can be prepared by considering the local realities.

The paper presents the results of a study that developed and applied social metabolism methods to assess the sustainability of a regional economy, particularly the dynamics related to changes in the production and use of energy. The first objective of the study was to assess the feasibility of using existing secondary data sources as a basis for sub-nation state and regional analysis (with the regions in this case differentiating the area based on rurality). The second was to structure the outputs of the analysis in ways that provided comprehensive yet succinct and interpretable assessments of the balance of flows of material, energy and money that underpin the economy, with the intention that ultimately these assessments would be used to inform policymaking. The paper provides an introduction to the key concepts used within social metabolism analysis particularly the use of emergy (a measure of the cumulative environmental support provided to a social-ecological system). This is a unifying metric into which the myriad flows within an economy can be translated and combined in meaningful ways. It does so by, preserving information on both the quantity and quality of flows and so avoiding the need for arbitrary weightings. The paper presents a range of options for the use of emergy-based metrics that could be used to inform policy making. Comparisons for the years 2001 and 2010 are made at country level for Scotland and for three degrees of rurality. The analysis highlights how decisions on the share of the offshore energy sector attributed to Scotland and on the share of services (particularly those imported from beyond U.K.) have profound effects on the sustainability trajectory of the economy and the conclusions that might be drawn for policy. The paper concludes that the methods have the potential to add value to existing administrative datasets, and provide new perspectives that may be of value to policy making, but acknowledges that challenges remain in translating this potential into tangible use within policymaking.

Production of electronic devices (e.g., the day-by-day increasing number of computers and cell phones) requires energy as well as large and diverse amounts of materials, among which rare and strategic minerals. The extraction of such non-renewable resources is already a source of concern due to their limited availability and environmental impact. Identifying energy and materials costs over the entire production chain is, therefore, a priority in order to be able to suggest improvements that lead to optimizing resource use. On the other hand, the large and increasing numbers of these devices worldwide create additional concern about their end-of-life disposal, in order to prevent pollution of air, water and soil due to their degradation and leakage, if not properly managed. The end-of-life management of Waste Electric and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) has been the subject of heated debate over the past years. Their environmental impacts are so huge that they must be considered hazardous waste and must be regulated by a dedicated and specific legislation at international, European and national levels. Impacts may be decreased if WEEE are looked at a mine of valuable materials that, if properly exploited, can be re-introduced into the production chains with considerable economic and environmental advantages (and less extraction from mines). In this study, an energy assessment is performed to examine the energy costs of desktop and laptop computers from raw materials acquisition to manufacturing and use. Two options are explored, namely the use of primary materials and conventional fossil energy sources as well as an alternative scenario that uses recycled materials and renewable resources, in both production and use phases. Since, however, the environmental quality of renewable and non-renewable resources (their availability, renewability, regulatory role within ecosystems’ dynamics) depends on the work performed by nature for their generation at the scale of biosphere, an eMergy assessment (i.e. an evaluation of the environmental support at the largest scale of biosphere) was also performed in order to explore the sustainability of reuse, recycling and recovering patterns. Calculated performance and sustainability indicators refer to the production and use of a desktop computer compared to a laptop computer, with focus on both production and use phases. In order to make comparison easier, not only reference is made to one computer as final product, but also to its computing performance (FLOPS, floating-point operations per second), a concept applicable to all computer models.

Issues regarding resource securities have risen exponentially because this global change corresponds to energy and water use intensification. Measures to mitigate the effects of the severity of the depletion and their environmental impacts require that resources accounting are not performed in isolation; a framework widely acknowledged as “nexus”. This study focused on the seafood supply chain taken into consideration the flow intensity and efficient usage of the resources along the chain. The study dealt in details the sub-units in the processing and packaging (PP) unit and the distributing and marketing (DM) unit along the chain. Moreover, the strength and efficient use of the resource was quantified as “nexus strength and nexus quality” to have a unified indicator to assess the interdependency and efficient use of resources in the seafood system. Result shows that; (1) about 2.92 × 108 kWh of energy and 4.23 × 107 m3 of water was used along the entire chain because of the direct consumption of seafood in China. It was further shown that, the quantity of seafood decreases along the chain and PP unit accounted for the highest usage of both energy (52.29%) and water (81.74%). (2) Handling and storage (HS) sector had the least nexus strength because it uses less energy and water though it received the highest quantity of seafood and PP had the highest SEW nexus strength. The PP unit was revealed the less efficient (lower nexus quality) unit because it uses majority of energy and water consumed in the whole chain hence contribute highly to related environmental impact released in the chain. Furthermore, sensitivity analysis (transport efficiency scenario, seafood use efficiency scenario) was conducted to compare resources consumption and efficiency usages in the sector. This information can assist with coherent policymaking and management to achieve efficiency and sustainability in the seafood sector.

The sustainability of the renowned artistic glass sector of Murano island, in the Venice Lagoon (Italy), has been challenged in recent years by the evolution of several socio-economic dynamics as well as by environmental constraints. Actually, a renewal of the systemic structure of the artistic glass production is increasingly compelling. In this work, the Emergy Accounting method (EMA) is applied to evaluate the environmental sustainability of a Murano factory producing colored glass. The analysis, for which new Unit Emergy Values (UEVs) were calculated for some chemicals, shows that the activity relies mainly upon purchased resources, which is the most evident element of systemic weakness. An evaluation of the downstream ecosystem services required to dilute some heavy metal pollutants is also presented, again addressing the intrinsic fragility of the system. In particular, it is shown how the sustainability of the sector is indissolubly linked to the problems involved in the management of the entire Venice lagoon, underlining how the safeguard of Murano must be part of that of Venice and its lagoon. The UEV of semifinished artistic glasses results 2.31E+10 sej/g (with labor and services), and 1.87E+10 sej/g (without labor and services).

Land transfers are an important approach to Chinese farmland management and intensive crop production as well as a primary government strategy to promote Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region development; these transfers are expected not only to generate social, economic, and ecological benefits but also to further Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei’s regional development by means of more efficient and sustainable resource use. However, together with the challenges associated with this process, several contradictions and problems have arisen that are now critical political and social concerns. Therefore, a modern demonstration zone of sustainable agriculture in Yi County, Hebei Province, China, was selected as a case study for emergy-based performance and sustainability evaluation of the associated social, economic, and ecological benefits before and after land transfer. The results suggest that land transfers have induced fundamental changes to land use, which improved performance in terms of resource use and sustainability indicators (based on the emergy approach) and have produced ecological, economic, and social benefits mainly based on the increased link to the surrounding larger scale economic system via the increased demand for labor and services from outside. Therefore, the emergy results, while highlighting the achieved or potential benefits, also indicate that local improvements cannot be fully achieved if the entire supply chain of goods and resources is not suitably improved as well and that the local system is heavily affected by the larger-scale functioning of the economy as a whole, such that all links across scales need to be monitored and carefully addressed.

Cities are the engine of economic development and human wellbeing, but their dynamics needs to be supported by the convergence of large flows of material and energy resources. Assessing a city resource metabolism becomes increasingly crucial, not only concerning the relation with the environment as a source or a sink, but also concerning the internal dynamics of resource exchange among city components and sectors. We applied Emergy Accounting (EMA) and Cumulative Energy Demand (CED) methods to develop and validate indicators of urban environmental sustainability, using as case studies five urban systems of different size in Italy. CED allowed an assessment of the commercial energy consumption required on local and global scales to support the city life and economy. Airborne emissions related to direct and indirect energy consumption were also assessed. EMA was used to quantify the environmental support required for the urban metabolism, in terms of resource generation and ecosystem services supply. Combining these three aspects, a new metric is discussed and developed to estimate the environmental impact of cities, with reference to their resource use, in order to implement comprehensive indicators and suggest resource use criteria at urban level. A city’s support area to buffer upstream and downstream environmental loading is also calculated. Relative and absolute sustainability concepts are introduced and discussed, showing how far the investigated cities are from a resource-based environmentally sustainable state. Finally, practices are suggested as an exit strategy from the present intensive fossil powered economy towards a higher level of environmental sustainability and wellbeing.

Circular Economy (CE) concepts and tools are getting increasing attention with regard to their implementation in agricultural, urban and industrial sectors towards innovative business models to optimize resource use, process performances and development policies. However, conventional biophysical and economic indicators hardly fit CE characteristics. Life cycle assessment, footprint and economic cost-benefit indicators, do not fully capture the specificity of a closed loop CE framework, characterized by feedbacks and resource use minimization and quality assessment. Commonly used mono-dimensional indicators seem unable to successfully relate the process performance and the use of ecosystem services and natural capital, in that they do not assess the environmental quality and sustainability (renewability, fit to use, recycle potential) of resources and the complexity of interaction between agro/industrial/urban environments and socioeconomic systems, and translate into an incomplete and inadequate picture, far from an effective CE perspective. In this study, Emergy Accounting method (EMA) is used to design an improved approach to CE systemic aspects, focusing on the importance of new indicators capable of capturing both resource generation (upstream), product (downstream) and systems dimensions. This conceptual scheme is built around the case study of the City of Napoli’s economy (Campania region, Southern Italy) considering the surrounding agro-industrial area with its smaller urban settlements. In order to design a reasonable and reliable CE framework, a number of already existing and innovative processes is analyzed and discussed, through a bottom-up procedure capable to account for CE development options based on the recovery of locally available and still usable resources (i.e., conversion of waste cooking oil into biodiesel, conversion of slaughterhouse residues to power and chemicals, recovery and conversion of agro-waste residues, amongst others). The result highlighted that EMA was capable to keep track of the improvement generated by the implemented circularity patterns in terms of reduced total emergy of the system. Moreover, EMA indicators suggested that, in any case, the CE business framework should be intended as a transitional strategy towards more feasible paradigms.

The agricultural sector is critical for the achievement of sustainable development worldwide. Its present and future sustainability relies on the difficult balance of food production and environmental impact. The need for resource use optimization and increasing reliance on renewable energy, calls for increased development and integration of its supporting, provisioning, regulating and social services (multifunctionality) worldwide, in agreement with the global framework of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, the European Union Objectives and other international assessment studies (e.g. the United Nations International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development). The performance of the Italian agricultural system is monitored and evaluated in this paper by means of the emergy accounting method coupled to decomposition analysis techniques, applied to a 25 year time series (1985–2010). The aim of this study is to assess the sustainability of these systems over time as well as to identify the major drivers of performance change, to serve as the basis for future policy scenarios. Two Italian regional agricultural systems (Emilia Romagna, in Northern Italy, and Campania, in Southern Italy) are selected as case studies representative of the Italian agriculture. Results show a steady decrease of cropped land, an increase of the fraction of renewable resource use, an overall increase of sustainability (expressed by emergy indicators) in both regions. The fraction of renewable emergy use increased from 14% to 21% in the Emilia Romagna region and from 23% to 27% in the Campania region, compared to the year 1985, with oscillating behavior over time. The overall Emergy Sustainability Index increased from 14% to 16% in the Emilia Romagna region and from 15% to 19% in the Campania region, recently. The results of decomposition analysis highlight the important role of land use change and labor productivity as major drivers of total emergy use in both agricultural systems. The approach applied in this paper is applicable to the study of other national and regional agricultural sectors wordwide, provided suitable time series of input and output flows are available.

Agricultural systems are a crucial interface between human societies and nature, in that they “amplify” the human-controlled investments by concentrating natural energies of sun, rain, and nutrients and make them converge to food production. Even if gross economic value, labor and energy expenditures associated to agriculture are unlikely to ever represent a large fraction of the total performance of a national developed economy, yet the role of such a sector goes much beyond the actual food production and calls for higher attention by concerned policy makers. The evaluation of the dynamics and performance of agricultural systems must be carefully investigated from different sus- tainability points of view (energy, material, economic, environmental, social) to point out how the system and its main driving forces are evolving over time and how can they support a national economy. In this study we compare the agricultural systems of Scotland and Italy over time, by means of an integrated analysis model, SUMMA (Sustainability Multimethod Multiscale Assessment) capable to take into account different dimensions of the investigated systems. The final goal is to understand what are the steps of the investigated processes that are characterized by the lowest performances as well as how the system can be made more robust and resilient in spite of the existing problems (among which increasing energy and resource prices, de- creasing land quality, and decreasing marginal productivity).

Selected energy and material resource conversion systems are compared in this paper under an extended LCA point of view. A multi-method multi-scale assessment procedure is applied in order to generate consistent performance indicators based on the same set of input data, to ascertain the existence of constraints or crucial steps characterized by low conversion efficiency and to provide the basis for improvement patterns. Optimizing the performance of a given process requires that many different aspects are taken into account. Some of them, mostly of technical nature, relate to the local scale at which the process occurs. Other technological, economic and environmental aspects are likely to affect the dynamics of the larger space and time scales in which the process is embedded. These spatial and time scale effects require that a careful evaluation of the relation between the process and its surroundings is performed, so that hidden consequences and possible sources of inefficiency and impact are clearly identified. In this paper we analyse and compare selected electricity conversion systems, alternative fuels and biofuels, waste management strategies and finally the time evolution of an urban system, in order to show the importance of a multiple perspective point of view for the proper evaluation of a system's environmental and resource use performance.

The overall goal of the present study is to find integrated patterns and synergies among different approaches for the evaluation of complex production systems. In order to merge the different methodological, spatial and time-scale perspectives, an extended LCA framework (SUMMA, Sustainability Multi-method Multi-scale Assessment) is developed and tested focusing on the dynamics and performance of the agricultural sector in Italy. The SUMMA framework builds on LCA inventory and results complemented by the quality and time perspectives of the Emergy Synthesis method by which the free renewable flows, embodied time, direct and indirect labour, as well as economic and quality aspects are accounted for. The study, carried out within the EU funded SMILE project, is aimed at developing an integrated evaluation tool taking into account environmental, economic and social aspects, identification of drivers for change, and potential synergies. The development of an integrated model is crucial: the flows of energy and materials, land use, the rate of using resources, interrelations of socioeconomic and natural systems, and the time and spatial scales are all interlinked and cannot be evaluated separately without losing generality and wholeness. Most often, the economic performance, due to links with employment and social parameters (economic and social sustainability), is the aspect considered with more interest by policy makers and managers. Nevertheless, a comprehensive assessment cannot disregard environmental aspects and use of resource being important requisites of sustainability for the evaluation of different sectors or processes.

none 6 si The livestock sector is required by the European Union policies to strengthen its multifunctional role by diversifying its production patterns. In Italy many dairy farms have already installed energy plants such as bi-ogas digestors, mainly to increase their economic sustainability. We eval-uate in this study the environmental performance of raw milk production to be used for world-renowned Parmigiano Reggiano cheese production in a dairy farm located in northern Italy. Other products (crops, meat, biogas, electricity) are also included in the assessment. The study was carried out by means of Material Flow Accounting, Cumulative Energy Demand, Emergy Accounting and Life Cycle Assessment methods. The final pur-pose was to analyze the effects induced by different mixes of inputs (feed-stock, electricity, fertilizers) and outputs (crops, milk, meat, electricity) on the process performance. The evaluation was implemented before and after the installation of a pho-tovoltaic power plant and a biogas digester coupled to a biogas-fueled elec-tric generator. This study explores five alternative scenarios: Scenario 1. An intensive livestock farm, in which feedstock and electricity are pur-chased from outside and manure is sold or disposed of; Scenario 2. The real farm before the implementation of PV and biogas, using a fraction of self-produced feedstock and manure as fertilizer; Scenario 3. The same farm, after photovoltaic electricity implementation, to cover 100% of local demand; Scenario 4. The same farm, after installing a manure digester and an electric generator, to produce electricity from biogas (sold as additional product, while digestate is used as fertilizer); 5. A Polish dairy farm, pro-ducing crops, meat and milk for the market, using manure as fertilizer and no renewable energy appliances. Results show local and large-scale improvements in the transition from Scenario 1 to Scenario 2 (due to increased optimization driven by fodder self-reliance) as well as in the transition from Scenario 3 to Scenario 3 (due to electricity self-reliance). The transition from Scenario 3 to Scenario 4 shows the added value of additional biogas-driven electric generation, while Scenario 5 shows the advantage of optimized milk production due to pedigree breeding, pasture availability and sale of crops in addition to dairy products. Results suggest that several kinds of improvements are possible by acting on farm structure, renewable energy supply, and differ-ent mix of products. Results also confirm the effectiveness of a multicriteria multiscale bio-physical assessment method towards a better understanding of costs and benefits of production alternatives. open Patrizia Ghisellini; Gaetano Protano; Silvio Viglia; Marek Gaworski; Marco Setti; Sergio Ulgiati; Patrizia Ghisellini; Gaetano Protano; Silvio Viglia; Marek Gaworski; Marco Setti; Sergio Ulgiati

Environmental protection is often considered as competing with human activities and economic development. On the contrary, more innovative guidelines recommend nature conservation to be achieved without banning human activities but, instead, developing appropriate management practices aimed at joint economic, social, and environmental sustainability. The suitability of such management schemes should be evaluated through integrated assessment frameworks overcoming mono-dimensional metrics and criteria. In this study, we integrated different environmental accounting methods with life cycle and ecosystem services assessment to investigate the interplay of human activities and nature conservation in the Bory Tucholskie National Park (Poland). Indicators of environmental costs and impacts due to the exploitation of forest ecosystem services in the study area were calculated. In addition, the economic and ecological value of the main forest ecosystem services was assessed to explore the benefits gained in preserving stocks of natural capital while exploiting flows of eco- system services.

Agriculture is a fundamental sector of economy and society that ensures food supply, classified by the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment among the so-called “provisioning ecosystem services”. Due to the increase of food demand worldwide, farmers are shifting more and more towards intensive agriculture. This trend is connected to the unsustainable consumption of natural resources, most often exceeding the carrying capacity of natural ecosystems. In this paper, the resource use and biophysical constraints of Scottish agriculture were investigated at regional and national levels by means of the Emergy Synthesis method. The study focused on two main agroecosystems: 1) the Cairngorms National Park (CNP) and 2) the national agricultural sector of Scotland as a whole. The evolution of the agricultural sector was explored over time (years 1991, 2001, 2007), accounting for local renewable and non-renewable resources as well as imported resources. Performance and sustainability indicators were then calculated with and without including human labor and economic services (money flows). In the year 2007, the Emergy Yield Ratio (EYR) of the Scottish agricultural sector was about 46% of the same indicator calculated for the CNP (2.65 versus 5.72, respectively). A higher Environmental Loading Ratio (ELR) was calculated for the national sector than for CNP (1.25 versus 1.02, respectively). The Emergy Sustainability Index (ESI) was 2.12 for the national sector and 5.60 for CNP. Such figures were calculated without including the emergy flows supporting labor and services. If the latter are also accounted for, the ESI of the national level and CNP drop by a factor 5.6 and 3.9, respectively. Such variations suggest that larger flows of non-renewable resources strongly affect the environmental performance, increasing the dependence on non-renewable resources supporting the larger economic system in which the agricultural sectors are embedded in.

Summary. The comparison was performed on the flora of lawns located in the vicinity of three brine concentration towers in the Spa Park in the town of Ciechocinek. It was found that a different level of saline water inflow into the soil and a different use of these lawns are the main causes of the observed differences in the number and the species composition of halophytes and glycophytes. The possibility of determining the differences in the intensity of human impact on the studied systems was discussed, as well as the value of the Environmental Sustainability Index was determined through emergy analysis. Energy flow diagrams were prepared for two basic greenery management methods and salt production, which best differentiates the flora of the studied lawns.

Optimizing the performance of a given process requires that many different aspects are taken into account. Some of them, mostly of technical nature, relate to the local scale at which the process occurs. Other technological, economic and environmental aspects are likely to affect the dynamics of the larger space and time scales in which the process is embedded. These spatial and time scale effects require that a careful evaluation of the relation between the process and its ‘surroundings’ is performed, so that hidden consequences and possible sources of inefficiency and impact are clearly identified. In this work the authors summarise a number of studies in which they applied a multi-method and multi-scale approach in order to generate a comprehensive picture of the investigated systems/processes. The benefits of such an integrated investigation approach are discussed.