U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

The Ag Data Commons is migrating

The Ag Data Commons is migrating to a new institutional portal on Figshare. The current system is available for search and download only. The new platform is open for submission with assistance from Ag Data Commons curators. Please contact NAL-ADC-Curator@usda.gov, if you need to publish or update your datasets.

Life Cycle Assessment

The Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) collection is a catalog and archive of data, tools, and resources that support LCA for agriculture and related areas of research. It is complementary to the USDA LCA Commons Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) database, and provides access to a wider range LCA data and tools.

Life Cycle Assessment (also known as life cycle analysis, or cradle-to-grave analysis) is a method of assessing environmental impacts associated with all stages of a product's life. For example, it measures impact from raw material extraction to materials processing, manufacture, distribution, use, repair and maintenance, and disposal or recycling. The goal of LCA is to compare the full range of environmental effects assignable to products and services by quantifying all inputs and outputs of material flows, and then assessing how these material flows impact the environment. This information is used to improve processes, support policy, and provide a sound basis for informed decisions.

Filter by Program

Filter by Author

Filter by Funding Source

Filter by User-supplied tags

Filter by Ag Data Commons Keywords

Browse Life Cycle Assessment Resources

Datasets

23 datasets

Unit process data for field crop production version 2

    The goals for the release of Version 2 of the field crop data are to rework the data to link up with the tier 2 field operations/ work process datasets, eliminate the use of service processes, and rework balance parameters using a simpler formula. Models represent states that produced field crops in the ARMS survey years included.

    Unit process data for field crop production version 1

      These unit process models represent crop production in US states in multiple years. The main data source used for the development of the field crop data described here is the annual USDA Agricultural Resource Management Survey (ARMS). ARMS data are from an annual national survey of field-level farm practices sponsored jointly by USDA Economic Research Service (ERS) and the USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS). These datasets were released in ecospold version 1 in June 2012.

      Product system model for distributed renewable syngas production

        This product system model represents the generation of two co-products from forest or wood product mill operation residues using the Tucker Renewable Natural Gas (RNG) Thermochemical conversion process. The two co-products are a synthesis gas (syngas) and biochar (a form of charcoal made from woody biomass via pyrolysis, used as a soil amendment, and under investigation as an approach to carbon sequestration to produce negative carbon dioxide emissions). Data for this process were collected in St. Regis, Montana and Locust, NC, where the Tucker RNG conversion process has been tested and demonstrated.

        Data from: Environmental footprints of beef cattle production in the United States

          To quantify important environmental impacts of beef cattle production in the United States, surveys and visits of farms, ranches and feedlots were conducted throughout seven regions (Northeast, Southeast, Midwest, Northern Plains, Southern Plains, Northwest and Southwest). Life cycle environmental impacts of U.S. beef cattle production were determined. Annual carbon emission was 243 ± 26 Tg CO2e (21.3 ± 2.3 kg CO2e/kg carcass weight). Annual fossil energy use was 569 ± 53 PJ (50.0 ± 4.7 MJ/kg carcass weight). Blue water consumption was 23.2 ± 3.5 TL (2034 ± 309 L/kg carcass weight). Reactive nitrogen loss was 1760 ± 136 Gg N (155 ± 12 g N/kg carcass weight).

          Unit process data for Rapeseed production in the U.S. wheat belt

            Unit processes represent wheat-wheat-fallow and wheat-wheat-rapeseed crop production simulations that illustrate using the IPCC (Tier 1) method for calculating changes in soil C and the roundtable on sustainable biomaterials (RSB) method for estimating N2O emissions in different locations for the use in modeling the crop production portion of the HRJ lifecycle. Data are archived in a SimaPro .csv file, which can be imported into various life cycle assessment modeling tools.

            Unit process data for agricultural self-propelled equipment version 1

              This document describes the preparation of datasets for the LCA Digital Commons that represent unit process/ gate-to-gate operations for the production of work (in MJ) by agricultural self-propelled equipment and fleets of agricultural self-propelled equipment. The data cover 19 types of fleets and over 200 types of self-propelled equipment datasets, representing the potential to prepare thousands of unit-process datasets by varying the operating and model years, applicable power ranges, and operating temperatures.

              Unit process data for lignin extraction in a softwood kraft pulp mill

                This unit process represents the gate-to-gate production of 1 air-dried metric tonne of kraft lignin, coproduced with southern bleached softwood kraft pulp (SBSK), high voltage electricity and unrefined tall oil soap. The pulp is derived from pine or loblolly pine in a kraft pulping process at a mill in the southern United States (U.S.). Lignin is extracted via precipitation and acid washing. All flows are production weighted to kraft lignin. The SBSK pulp production technologies are an aggregation of those applied in the southern U.S. in 2013.