PurposeLife cycle impact assessment (LCIA) results are used to assess potential environmental impacts of different products and services. As part of the UNEP-SETAC life cycle initiative flagship project that aims to harmonize indicators of potential environmental impacts, we provide a consensus viewpoint and recommendations for future developments in LCIA related to the ecosystem quality area of protection (AoP). Through our recommendations, we aim to encourage LCIA developments that improve the usefulness and global acceptability of LCIA results.MethodsWe analyze current ecosystem quality metrics and provide recommendations to the LCIA research community for achieving further developments towards comparable and more ecologically relevant metrics addressing ecosystem quality.Results and discussionWe recommend that LCIA development for ecosystem quality should tend towards species-richness-related metrics, with efforts made towards improved inclusion of ecosystem complexity. Impact indicators—which result from a range of modeling approaches that differ, for example, according to spatial and temporal scale, taxonomic coverage, and whether the indicator produces a relative or absolute measure of loss—should be framed to facilitate their final expression in a single, aggregated metric. This would also improve comparability with other LCIA damage-level indicators. Furthermore, to allow for a broader inclusion of ecosystem quality perspectives, the development of an additional indicator related to ecosystem function is recommended. Having two complementary metrics would give a broader coverage of ecosystem attributes while remaining simple enough to enable an intuitive interpretation of the results.ConclusionsWe call for the LCIA research community to make progress towards enabling harmonization of damage-level indicators within the ecosystem quality AoP and, further, to improve the ecological relevance of impact indicators.

中文翻译：

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LCIA 的生态系统质量：现状、协调和前进方向的建议

目的生命周期影响评估（LCIA）结果用于评估不同产品和服务的潜在环境影响。作为旨在协调潜在环境影响指标的 UNEP-SETAC 生命周期倡议旗舰项目的一部分，我们为 LCIA 与生态系统质量保护区 (AoP) 相关的未来发展提供了共识观点和建议。通过我们的建议，我们旨在鼓励 LCIA 的发展，提高 LCIA 结果的实用性和全球可接受性。方法我们分析当前的生态系统质量指标，并向 LCIA 研究界提供建议，以实现进一步发展可比较和更具生态相关性的指标，解决生态系统质量问题。结果和讨论我们建议生态系统质量的 LCIA 发展应倾向于与物种丰富度相关的指标，并努力提高生态系统复杂性的包容性。影响指标——由一系列不同的建模方法产生，例如，根据空间和时间尺度、分类覆盖范围以及指标是否产生相对或绝对的损失衡量——应该被框架化，以促进它们在单一的聚合指标。这也将提高与其他 LCIA 损坏水平指标的可比性。此外，为了更广泛地纳入生态系统质量观点，建议制定与生态系统功能相关的附加指标。拥有两个互补的指标将更广泛地覆盖生态系统属性，同时保持足够简单，以便能够直观地解释结果。结论我们呼吁 LCIA 研究界在协调生态系统质量 AoP 内的损害水平指标方面取得进展，并且，此外，提高影响指标的生态相关性。