Biodiversity

Understanding the link between biodiversity loss and technology life cycles

A research group at DTU is developing methods to quantify impacts on biodiversity associated with chemical and plastic emissions along product and technology life cycles.

Skovsø. Foto: Colourbox
Forest lake. Colourbox

Results

The first results of the group's work have already been published, for example linking organism effects to biodiversity loss for chemicals in aquatic ecosystems (see here) and for micro- and nanoplastics in soil ecosystems (see here), differential effects of chemicals on different organism groups (see here), developing a concept for defining ecological boundaries for chemical pollution (see here) and relating chemical and plastic pollution to Planetary Boundaries (see here). 

References

Oginah, S.A., Posthuma, L., Maltby, L., Hauschild, M., Fantke, P., 2023. Linking freshwater ecotoxicity to damage on ecosystem services in life cycle assessment. Environment International 171, 107705. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envint.2022.107705

Li, T., Cui, L., Xu, Z., Liu, H., Cui, X., Fantke, P., 2023. Micro- and nanoplastics in soil: Linking sources to damage on soil ecosystem services in life cycle assessment. Science of the Total Environment 904, 166925. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.166925

Oginah, S.A., Posthuma, L., Hauschild, M., Slootweg, J., Kosnik, M., Fantke, P., 2023. To split or not to split: Characterizing chemical pollution impacts in aquatic ecosystems with species sensitivity distributions for specific taxonomic groups. Environmental Science and Technology 57, 14526-14538. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.3c04968

Kosnik, M.B., Hauschild, M., Fantke, P., 2022. Toward assessing absolute environmental sustainability of chemical pollution. Environmental Science and Technology 56, 4776-4787. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.1c06098

Persson, L., Carney Almroth, B.M., Collins, C.D., Cornell, S., de Wit, C.A., Diamond, M.L., Fantke, P., Hassellöv, M., MacLeod, M., Ryberg, M.W., Jørgensen, P.S., Villarrubia-Gómez, P., Wang, Z., Hauschild, M.Z., 2022. Outside the safe operating space of the planetary boundary for novel entities. Environmental Science and Technology 56, 1510-1521. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.1c04158

Topic

The focus on biodiversity has increased sharply. Plant and animal species are threatened with extinction and many researchers describe the biodiversity crisis as the worst crisis facing humanity. DTU is particularly concerned with biodiversity in the marine area and with developing technology that can be used to monitor and improve biodiversity.

Read more in our special topic about biodiversity.