Environ. Sci. Technol.
2009, 43, 7324–7330
Assessment of Land Use Impact on
Water-Related Ecosystem Services
Capturing the Integrated
Terrestrial-Aquatic System
WOUTER H. MAES,†
GRIET HEUVELMANS,‡ AND
B A R T M U Y S * ,†
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Division Forest, Nature and
Landscape Celestijnenlaan 200E10-2411, B-3001 Leuven,
Belgium, and Vlaamse Milieumaatschappij, Koning Albert II
Laan 20 bus 16, B-1000 Brussels, Belgium
Received February 27, 2009. Revised manuscript received
July 22, 2009. Accepted August 4, 2009.
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Although the importance of green (evaporative) water flows
in delivering ecosystem services has been recognized, most
operational impact assessment methods still focus only on blue
water flows. In this paper, we present a new model to
evaluate the effect of land use occupation and transformation
on water quantity. Conceptually based on the supply of
ecosystem services by terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, the
model is developed for, but not limited to, land use impact
assessment in life cycle assessment (LCA) and requires a minimum
amount of input data. Impact is minimal when evapotranspiration
is equal to that of the potential natural vegetation, and
maximal when evapotranspiration is zero or when it exceeds
a threshold value derived from the concept of environmental water
requirement. Three refinements to the model, requiring more
input data, are proposed. The first refinement considers a minimal
impact over a certain range based on the boundary
evapotranspiration of the potential natural vegetation. In the
second refinement the effects of evaporation and transpiration
are accounted for separately, and in the third refinement a
more correct estimate of evaporation from a fully sealed surface
is incorporated. The simplicity and user friendliness of the
proposed impact assessment method are illustrated with two
examples.
1. Introduction
Forests and Water. For a long time, forests were believed to
act as sponges, absorbing large quantities of water and
releasing them slowly, resulting in more constant water
outflow, with more water becoming available for human use.
The assumed positive hydrological effect, together with im-
proved soil protection, timber production, and socio-economic
development, formed the rationale behind several large-scale
afforestation programmes in degraded areas in the second half
of the twentieth century (1-3). Until recently, possible envi-
ronmental side effects of these afforestation programmes were
largely ignored, with all due consequences (4, 5).
Contrary to earlier belief, although forest soils generally
have a higher infiltration rate than soils of other land uses,
* Corresponding author phone: +32 16 329726; fax: +32 16 329760;
e-mail: Bart.muys@ees.kuleuven.be.
†
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven.
‡
Vlaamse Milieumaatschappij.
7324 9 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY / VOL. 43, NO. 19, 2009
total water use is likely to be higher for forests than for other
land uses both in wet and in dry climates, as a consequence
of the higher capacity of trees to evapotranspire (1, 6-8).
This results in a reduced total water outflow and low flow
of forests when compared with most other land uses, as
confirmed by paired catchments studies (7).
With rainfall and water availability likely to decrease in
a context of climate change and rising human demand,
particularly in the regions where water is already scarce (9),
the pressure on water resources will dramatically increase
in the next decades (10).
This contributes to an environmental view on forests as
big consumers of the already oversolicited local water budget,
switching the enthusiasm for wide scale afforestation in the
second half of the twentieth century to a present-day forest
skepticism.
The question arises whether this skepticism is scientifically
better founded than the previous afforestation-enthusiasm.
First of all, older plantations and indigenous forests, par-
ticularly when old-growth, generally consume less water than
vigorously growing plantations (6, 7). Furthermore the
expected suppression of plant and forest water use due to
increased levels of atmospheric CO2 is already noticeable by
increased freshwater levels at catchment level (11, 12).
Additionally, forests also have positive effects on water
flows. Apart from some exceptions (6, 8), erosion rates
from forests are in general very low, and water quality is
good (6). Thanks to the high infiltration rate, forests
generally reduce peak flows and floods, though this effect
is minimal during more extreme (and damaging) peak flows
and at larger scale (1).
Limitations of the Blue Water Approach. Approaching
forests from a mere water consumption point of view arises
from a conventional yet simplistic view on water flows, in
which only the visible water resources, those that are
immediately available for mankind, are considered useful
and are accounted for. In this so-called “blue water approach”
all water flows in rivers, lakes and aquifers are taken into
account, while all water in water vapor flows, referred to as
“green water”, is ignored (13).
This blue water approach hampers a sustainable man-
agement of water flows (14). With only 20% of the world’s
crop land irrigated, 5% in subSaharan Africa, green water
flow on croplands is estimated to be 4 times that of
consumptive blue water flow (14). Terrestrial ecosystems
depend almost entirely on the green water flow for their
productivity and functioning, and the annual green water
flow (69.600 km3 · year-1 (15)) exceeds the blue water flow
(42.000 km3 · year-1 (16)).
Ecosystem Services of Green and Blue Water Flow. Green
water flow is indispensable for the functioning and stability
of terrestrial ecosystems (17). Apart from being an essential
building block of biomass, water is lost as an inevitable
consequence of stomatal opening for photosynthesis. Besides
these obvious links between transpiration flow and produc-
tion, transpiration, as medium for nutrient uptake and flow
through the plants, is the key process in ecosystem control
over water, nutrient, and sediment flows (17, 18).
Trees owe their larger capacity to evapotranspire to their
deep rooting depth and bigger leaf area (19). These two
features and the green water flow they generate are the main
drivers of life support processes and terrestrial ecosystem
services.
Deep rooting improves nutrient and water availability for
the entire ecosystem through vertical uplifting (20) and
hydraulic lift (21-23) and provides opportunities for carbon
10.1021/es900613w CCC: $40.75  2009 American Chemical Society
Published on Web 08/24/2009
 sequestration (24). Likewise, the high leaf area and associated
layered canopy structure drive ecosystem services as air
filtering, habitat creation, nutrient redistribution, and erosion
control (18, 25).
The combined effect of canopy structure and evapo-
transpiration creates a steady microclimate (26, 27), providing
the forest system the conditions needed to maintain forest-
related biodiversity (17, 28). Hence, green water flow is used
to create a self-organizing complex system and facilitates
the forests’ resilience to disturbances (17, 29). According to
some authors, tropical forest systems self-sustain their climate
at a much larger scale (30), by increasing the local precipita-
tion through a change in roughness length and through higher
transpiration (30-32).
Valuing Ecosystem Services. There is growing awareness
of the central role ecosystem services play in supporting the
human well-being and of the need to incorporate these assets
in the economy (e.g., refs 33-35). Costanza et al. (36)
investigated the global value of forest ecosystem services
and estimated that tropical and temperate forests deliver a
mean of 2007 and 302 $U.S. · ha-1 · year-1 of ecosystem
services, respectively. Estimates by other authors are of the
same order (e.g., ref 37,) or higher (e.g., ref 38).
On the other hand, freshwater ecosystems (rivers, lakes
and most types of wetlands) and their biodiversity equally
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provide several ecosystem functions, including buffering
against droughts and floods, biodegradation of organic waste,
and a steady supply of fisheries and of water itself (39-41).
The global value of these ecosystem services supplied by
aquatic ecosystems is of the same order as those provided
by forest ecosystems (4.9 × 1012 vs 4.7 × 1012 $U.S. · year-1
(36)). Furthermore, the freshwater ecosystems are currently
experiencing far greater declines in biodiversity than most
terrestrial ecosystems as a consequence of, among other
reasons, flow modification and water pollution (41).
Therefore, applying a “green-and-blue water” approach,
in which the positive effects of green and blue water flows
are accounted for, is a prerequisite for sustainable land
management (17, 29, 42). However, up to now, this approach
is not or poorly incorporated in impact assessment methods,
such as life cycle assessment (LCA) (see Supporting Infor-
mation for a short review of existing methods for water
quantity impact assessment in LCA).
The aim of this paper is to propose a simple and
straightforward method to assess land use impact specifically
related to water quantity, based on the ecosystem services
green and blue water flows deliver.
This method is designed for incorporation in land use
impact assessment of LCA. In a LCA-context, land use impact
consists of two types of intervention, i.e., land use occupation
impact (the impact associated with the use of an area during
a certain time for a certain human-controlled purpose) and
land use transformation impact (the impact of a human-
induced change in use of a land area, sometimes referred to
as land use change impact) (43, 44). Occupation impact is
calculated as A*T *I, transformation impact as A*∆I, were A
denotes the area occupied, T the time of occupation, I the
environmental impact of the land, and ∆I the change in this
impact following transformation (43). In the proposed
method, we estimate the water quantity-related impact (I)
of a land use occupation and its change following land use
transformation (∆I).
2. A New Impact Assessment Method
The natural flow regime is the natural river discharge in a
river basin that would have occurred in the absence of human
impacts in a river basin (40, 45). Its central role in sustaining
biodiversity and ecosystem services is now widely recognized
(46), as it represents the discharge level aquatic ecosystems
are best adapted to and at which they have maximal resilience
(40). Hence, we use natural flow regime as the discharge
level at which aquatic ecosystem services are maximal.
The terrestrial ecosystem corresponding with the concept
of absence of human disturbance is generally known as the
shifting-mosaic steady state or potential natural vegetation
(PNV). Even though biomass and control over nutrient flow
are not necessarily maximal at this stage, the PNV can be
interpreted as the stage in which ecosystem services are
maximal, because it is the stage with the highest habitat
diversity, resistance, and resilience of all succession phases
(47).
Impact Assessment Method. The indicator on which the
impact assessment method is based is evaporative flow. The
impact of a land use that evapotranspires the same amount
of water as the PNV is minimal, and more transpiration than
this level would not lead to better terrestrial ecosystem
services. When green water flow is 0, no ecosystem services
are fulfilled, and the impact on the terrestrial ecosystem is
maximal.
For the sake of simplicity, we use linear relationships to
calculate impacts. The impact of a land use on the terrestrial
(green) water flow is represented in Figure 1a, and is
mathematically expressed as follows:
ETPNV - ETact
If ETact < ETPNV: TWI ) (1)
ETPNV
If ETact g ETPNV: TWI ) 0 (2)
Where TWI is the land use impact on the terrestrial (green)
water flow (value between 0 for minimal and 1 for maximal
impact), ETact and ETPNV the mean annual evapotranspiration
(mm or l · m-2) of the actual land use system and of the
potential natural vegetation.
The impact on aquatic ecosystems of a land use system
that evapotranspires the same amount of water as the PNV
is minimal. If a land use provides more water, the impact
remains minimal. If it consumes more water, the aquatic
ecosystem functioning will become more disturbed, until a
critical level is reached, passed which the aquatic ecosystem
becomes irreversibly damaged. This critical level is calculated
in environmental flow assessments and is known as minimal
flow or environmental water requirement (EWR), mostly
expressed as a proportion of the natural river discharge
(denoted as xEWR, with xEWR < 1). Several strategies have been
proposed for its calculation (46, 48).
The corresponding threshold evapotranspiration level of
the terrestrial ecosystem (ETEWR; (mm)) is then given as
ETEWR ) P - xEWR · (P - ETPNV) (3)
In eq 3, P represents the annual precipitation (mm). The
impact of a land use on the aquatic (blue) water flow (AWI)
is represented in Figure 1.b, and can be expressed as
If ETact e ETPNV: AWI ) 0 (4)
ETact - ETPNV
If ETPNV < ETact < ETEWR: AWI ) (5)
ETEWR - ETPNV
If ETact g ETEWR: AWI ) 1 (6)
TWI and AWI can be combined to yield the integrated
terrestrial-aquatic water impact TAWI (Figure 1c). Combining
eqs 1-6 yields
ETPNV - ETact
If ETact e ETPNV: TAWI ) (7)
ETPNV
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 ETact - ETPNV
If ETPNV < ETact < ETEWR: TAWI )
ETEWR - ETPNV
If ETact g ETEWR: TAWI ) 1
If ETact is lower than ETPNV, there is an environmental impact
because not all terrestrial ecosystem services are fulfilled,
and this impact increases with decreasing evapotranspira-
tion. If ETact is higher than ETPNV, there is also an impact
because the aquatic terrestrial ecosystem functions are
hampered, and the impact increases further with increasing
water use, up to a threshold value.
We aimed to keep the data requirements for the model
as low as possible, allowing it to be incorporated in existing
LCA methods or to be used on its own. Only two types of
green water flow (ETact and ETPNV) and annual rainfall have
to be measured or estimated. The fourth required variable,
xEWR, can be estimated from Smakhtin et al. (40).
In case of land use transformation, transformation impact
∆TAWI can be estimated as TAWI2 - TAWI1, with TAWI2 and
TAWI1 the impact of the new and of the previous land use,
respectively.
3. Discussion and Model Refinement
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3.1. Underlying Assumptions of the Basic Model. The
proposed model requires a minimum of input data, which
implies that several (implicit) assumptions were made:
• Linear relationships between the points with maximal
and minimal impacts were assumed for the charac-
terization functions. However, natural processes are
rarely linear. In section 3.3, we propose using threshold
values for the ETPNV to overcome this problem.
• By using green flow (evapotranspiration) as a predictor
of ecosystem services, it is implicitly assumed that
transpiration and evaporation contribute equally to the
ecosystem services. A correction for this will be dis-
cussed in section 3.4.
• It was assumed that evapotranspiration of a fully sealed
surface is 0, which is not correct. A way to account for
this is presented in section 3.5.
• The impact on aquatic ecosystem services was assumed
minimal when fresh water flow is equal to or higher
FIGURE 1. Model of water quantity impact a. on terrestrial ecosystems (TWI), b. on aquatic ecosystems (AWI), and c. on both
aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems (TAWI) as a function of evapotranspiration (ET) of the potential natural vegetation (PNV) and a
threshold ETEWR. Figure 1d demonstrates how linear functions starting from threshold values for ETPNV (ETPNV,min and ETPNV,max) can
describe more accurately the actual characterization function, represented by the dotted line.
7326 9 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY / VOL. 43, NO. 19, 2009
than the natural river discharge (45). However, very
high fresh water flows could impact aquatic ecosystem
(8) functioning. It is implicitly assumed in this model that
this effect is negligible compared with the impact on
(9) terrestrial ecosystems when ETact < ETPNV.
• The EWR-concept was used to couple green water flow,
the basic indicator of our model, to blue water flow.
xEWR is by origin an indicator at catchment or basin
scale (40). The model implicitly assumes that xEWR is
the same for the entire catchment, or that the considered
land use covers the entire catchment. Furthermore, the
impact on aquatic flows is restricted to ETEWR as a single
indicator. This is a considerable simplification of the
reality, in which the flow of a river is comprised of five
key components, i.e., variability, magnitude, frequency,
duration, timing, and rate of change (45). However,
implying all these elements is impractical in a LCA-
approach because of the large data input required (49).
3.2. Irrigated/Drained Cropland and Forest Plantations.
When assessing the land use impact of irrigated cropland,
irrigated forest plantations or of ecosystems taking up
groundwater, the model does not need to be adapted. This
can be illustrated with a fictitious example. Suppose that
mean annual rainfall is 1000 mm, and that ETPNV and ETEWR
are 600 and 800 mm. The impact will be minimal for an
ecosystem evapotranspiring 600 mm, in which case 400 mm
flows will flow to the aquatic ecosystem. If an additional 200
mm becomes available through irrigation or groundwater
recharge, this can be interpreted as a rentless loan of 200
mm taken up from the catchment. If the system would use
600 mm, 600 mm would flow back to aquatic resources; 200
mm would payback the loan, and 400 mm would flow to the
aquatic ecosystem; hence, total impact would be minimal.
However, it is likely that the total evapotranspiration of an
irrigated land use will be higher than ETPNV, and that TAWI
will be higher than that of a nonirrigated land use. Although
irrigation increases water availability, ETEWR still has to be
calculated from the rainfall of the rainfed natural system.
For drained systems, a similar reasoning prevails. The
model does not need to be adapted, and ETPNV and ETEWR
have to be calculated from the mean annual rainfall. Suppose
that in the above example 300 mm is drained from the system.
The water available to the drained system will be only 700
 TABLE 1. Impact of Selected Forest Stands, Cropland and Grazing Land on Well-Drained Luvisols and Podzoluvisols and on Gleyic
Cambisols in Flanders, Belgium (Data after Refs 55, 56 for the Basic (TAWI) and More Advanced Models (TAWI1 and TAWI2, See
Text for Details). ETact and Tact Are Expressed As % of Annual Rainfall (P; (mm))
P ETact Tact TWI AWI TAWI TAWI1 TAWI2
(1) Ecosystems on Well-Drained Luvisols and Podzoluvisols
Milio-Fagetum (PNV) 837 59 43
Pedunculate oak 757 64 42 0 0.22 0.22 0.22 0.22
Perennial ryegrass 1120 33 23 0.45 0 0.45 0.45 0.58
maize 889 49 30 0.17 0 0.17 0.25 0.34
wheat 899 58 43 0.3 0 0.03 0.01 0.01
(2) Ecosystems on Gleyic Cambisols
Fago-Quercetum (PNV) 773 55 35
Pedunculate oak 972 49 35 0.13 0 0.13 0.05 0.07

mm. If the system uses 600 mm for green water flow, the
terrestrial ecosystem services are still maximally provided,
and a total of 400 mm will flow to the aquatic ecosystem,
hence the total impact is minimal; however, it is likely that
the system would evapotranspire less, causing an impact on
terrestrial ecosystem services.
3.3. Threshold Effect and the Potential Natural Vegeta-
tion PNV. Natural processes (50) and ecosystem services (51)
are rarely linear. Instead, slight deviations from a reference
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on the terrestrial water flow, the basic model tends to
overestimate the terrestrial ecosystem services. If ETact < ETPNV
and if data are available to estimate transpiration (T) and
evaporation (E) of the actual and the potential natural
vegetation separately, it is preferable to use characterization
functions of the total green water flow (ETPNV,mod and ETact,mod):
ETPNV,mod ) aPNV · TPNV + bPNV · EPNV (14)

value may not cause a significant impact, while the envi-
ronmental impact may increase exponentially for larger
deviations. Such relationships can be relatively well described
by a linear function using a threshold value (see Figure 1d)
(50).
Threshold values of ETPNV can be estimated by using the
standard error of ETPNV-estimates to define a confidence
interval (ETPNV,min; ETPNV,max), or by estimating a minimal and
maximal evapotranspiration based on the dynamic status of
the potential natural vegetation. As a consequence of the
biomass dynamics of the landscape patches constituting the
PNV, its total biomass will fluctuate between a lower and an
upper value (47). The evapotranspiration of the PNV will
equally fluctuate within a range, with boundary levels
ETPNV,min and ETPNV,max. The impact of the potential natural
vegetation is always considered minimal, and it follows that
all ecosystems whose evapotranspiration lies between these
boundary levels will have a minimal impact.
A model refinement based on ETPNV,min and ETPNV,max is
illustrated in Figure 1d and is given by
ETPNV,min - ETact
If ETact < ETPNV,min: TAWI )
ETPNV,min
(10)
If ETPNV,min < ETact < ETPNV,max:: TAWI ) 0 (11)
ETact - ETPNV,max
If ETPNV,max < ETact < ETEWR: TAWI )
ETEWR - ETPNV,max
(12)
If ETact g ETEWR: TAWI ) 1 (13)
3.4. Transpiration or Evapotranspiration? Green water
flow is defined as the sum of transpiration and evaporation.
Evaporation is the sum of soil evaporation and interception
evaporation (42, 52) and can make up a substantial part of
the water budget (53). In the basic model, it was implicitly
assumed that the ecosystem services delivered by evaporative
and by transpirative water flow were the same. However, the
role of evaporative flow in providing ecosystem services is
limited to climate regulation, and possibly control over
nutrients and erosion, depending on the ecosystem, while
the transpirative flow is an important driver of all ecosystem
services. Hence, when calculating the impact of a land use
ETact,mod ) aact · Tact + bact · Eact (15)
In this function, aPNV and aact are the weights of the
transpirative flow and are always maximal (aact ) aPNV ) 1).
The weights to be assigned to bPNV and bact depend on the
ecosystem and land use. A possible approach could be to
base the weights on the ecosystem services as listed by
Costanza et al. (36). For instance, for temperate forests and
if the contribution of evaporation to ecosystem services is
only considered to be climate regulation, bPNV can be
estimated as 86 × 302-1 or 0.28 (86 $U.S. · year-1 · ha-1 is the
estimated contribution of climate regulation to the total
ecosystem services, estimated to be 302 $U.S. · year-1 · ha-1).
For the aquatic ecosystems only the total amount of water
flow matters, not the underlying terrestrial processes. Hence,
eqs 8 and 9 or 12 and 13 do not change when transpiration
and evaporation are regarded separately. In eqs 7, 10, and
11, ETPNV and ETact can be substituted by ETPNV,mod and
ETact,mod.
3.5. Evaporation of Sealed Surfaces. Evaporation of
sealed surfaces is not zero. Even for a hypothetic fully sealed
surface with an infinitely small storage capacity S, there will
be a small amount of water evaporating during rainfall events.
This amount can be estimated as (after Gash et al. (54), with
lim(Sf0)
Ē · P
ETmin ) (16)
Rj
with Rj the mean rainfall rate (mm · h-1) and Ej the mean rate
of evaporation from a saturated canopy (mm · h-1). Ej is a
very conservative parameter, varying little with climate, and
can be estimated as 0.22 mm · h-1. If estimates of Rj are
available, eq 7 can be adapted to
ETPNV - ETact
If ETact < ETPNV: TAWI ) (17)
ETPNV - ETmin
4. Examples of Impact Calculation
The model was first applied on a data set of a study in
Flanders, Belgium, in which total rainfall, transpiration, and
evaporation were measured separately (Table 1; data from
refs 55, 56 - only the results of the year 2000, when
measurements of the entire year were available, were used).

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FIGURE 2. Prolonged effect of clearfelling, burning and reseeding of a native mountain ash forest in Victoria, Australia (black
rectangles, data from ref 60) and of clearfelling of a dry, sclerophyllous Eucalypt forest and replanting with Pinus radiata (white
diamonds, data from ref 59) on a. the ETact (relative to the ETPNV, 100 · (ETact - ETPNV)/ETPNV) and b. on TAWI.
TAWI was calculated for the basic model (ETact as input), for
the advanced model with Eact and Tact used separately (TAWI1,
a value of 0.28 for bact and bPNV was used, see section 3.4) and
for the further advanced model in which also the evaporation
of sealed surfaces is accounted for (TAWI2, rain was con-
sidered to occur in 6% of the total hours, after ref 57). xEWR
was 0.44 (40).
Measurements from two sites were used. The sites on
well-drained luvisols and podzoluvisols had a Milio-Fagetum
as PNV (a mesotrophic beech forest (58)), while actual land
use consisted of oak forest, cropland (maize and wheat) and
grazing land. The oak forest consumed more water than the
PNV, resulting in a positive AWI (Table 1). The grazing land
and the maize field, whose ETact were lower than ETPNV, had
a positive TWI. Due to the higher E-fraction of these land
uses, TWI further increased in the more advanced model
(see Table 1a).
The second site on Gleyic cambisols had a Fago-Quer-
cetum as PNV (an oligotrophic oak-beech forest), while ac-
tual land use consisted of a monospecific oak stand. Lower
interception caused ETact to be lower than ETPNV, resulting
in relatively high TAWI, but this was corrected for in the
more advanced models.
As an illustration of how the model can be applied in a
non-LCA-related context, the prolonged impact in time of
clearfelling and replanting is shown in Figure 2. Two cases
of paired catchment studies were examined. In the first study,
a dry sclerophyllous Eucalypt forest (PNV) was cleared and
replaced by a Pinus radiata plantation in New South Wales,
Australia (Subtropical climate, xEWR ) 0.27, all data from ref
59). Immediately after clearfelling, ETact was much lower than
ETPNV, and TAWI was high, attributable to TWI. However,
after 8 years, ETact was already (slightly) higher than ETPNV.
As in natural conditions only 6.5 ( 5% of P flows to the rivers,
this has a profound impact on the aquatic water resources,
and TAWI is maximal. Results of a second study on clearfell-
ing, burning, and reseeding of a native mountain Ash forest
in Victoria, Australia (all data from ref 60, xEWR ) 0.27, ETPNV
uses 81 ( 2% of P) show a similar pattern, although a longer
time is needed for recovery.
7328 9 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY / VOL. 43, NO. 19, 2009
The above examples illustrate the user friendliness and
limited data requirements of the models and furthermore
demonstrate that the model is not limited to LCA, but can
be useful in environmental impact assessment or any other
type of land use impact study.
Acknowledgments
W.H.M. was funded by a K. U. Leuven Ph.D. grant. We would
like to acknowledge the Forecoman team for the inspiration
when building the model, particularly Bert Reubens and
Wouter Achten. We are grateful to three anonymous reviewers
for their valuable comments.
Supporting Information Available
A short review of existing methods for impact assessment of
water quantity, with a focus on methods in the life cycle
assessment (LCA) framework. This material is available free
of charge via the Internet at http://pubs.acs.org.
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