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Ecological and environmental impact of rice production in Shenyang, China
Received:February 13, 2018  
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KeyWord:life cycle assessment;ecological and environmental impact;rice;Shenyang
Author NameAffiliationE-mail
CHANG Jun-yan College of Land and Environment, Shenyang Agricultural University, Shenyang 110866, China  
SONG Ming-yang College of Resources and Environmental Sciences, Nanjing Agricultural University, Nanjing 210095, China  
YU Xiao-man College of Land and Environment, Shenyang Agricultural University, Shenyang 110866, China  
BAI Jin-heng College of Land and Environment, Shenyang Agricultural University, Shenyang 110866, China  
JIA Jing-xu Senior High School of Northeast Yucai Middle School, Shenyang 110179, China  
LIU Ming-da College of Land and Environment, Shenyang Agricultural University, Shenyang 110866, China mdsausoil@163.com 
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Abstract:
      Identifying environmental impacts of rice production in Shenyang will provide significant references for local clean production standards. In this study, life cycle assessment(LCA)was applied to evaluate 10 potential environmental impacts(i.e., land use, water depletion, mineral depletion, energy depletion, global warming, acidification, eutrophication, aquatic toxicity, soil toxicity, and human toxicity)in the rice production system, and the functional unit was 1 ton of rice. The results showed that the parameters with significant environmental impacts during rice production were aquatic toxicity, eutrophication, soil toxicity, and human toxicity, with impact indices of 16.278, 1.558, 1.457, and 0.960, respectively. The general LCA index was 2.267 after weighted treatment. We found that the large-scale use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides in the arable farming stage increased the potential impacts of acidification, eutrophication, aquatic toxicity, and soil toxicity. The large input of chemical fertilizers, especially nitrogen fertilizers, had aggravated fossil energy depletion in its upstream production and increased the contribution rate of global warming in the agrochemical production stage. Furthermore, the large amount of fossil energy depletion in the agrochemical production stage increased the demand for raw materials, which increased emissions of heavy metals during the raw material extraction stage, resulting in human toxicity as the main environmental impact in this stage. Therefore, reducing the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides is the key to controlling potential environmental impacts of the rice production system in Shenyang.