After discussing my project with all of my supervisors after the presentation last week, we’ve come to a consensus on a direction. The work has the same broad idea—i.e. assessing the impact on a city from the implementation of urban agriculture—but with different details. I’ll continue working with a method I’ve been utilizing since last summer, with which I’ve spent months learning the ins-and-outs of.
The method is based on life cycle assessment (LCA), which captures the impacts associated with the life cycle of a product or process. For example, to grow a tomato (the product to be assessed), fertilizers and pesticides are required material inputs. LCA estimates the environmental flows (such as air pollutant emissions or water consumption) from the different stages associated with those material’s life cycles in the context of growing that tomato—such as from extracting the raw resources for, manufacturing, and transporting those materials. The method I’m using additionally considers the capacity of ecosystems to provide for these environmental flows (e.g. the removal of air pollutants and the provision of water), and it does so on a regional basis, based on the actual characteristics of a region’s ecosystem. In this way, the environmental flows imposed on a specific region can be estimated, and assessing the impact on a city inside of that region may also be possible.
To serve as more inspiration for our continuing work, our team’s Barcelona adventures led us to the Magic Fountain of Montjuic tonight. It was easily the most crowded event we’ve attended here, and it takes place most nights during this time of year!
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