On the relevance of site specificity and temporal variability in agricultural LCA: a case study on mandarin in North Uruguay.
Purpose: Mandarin is a relevant citrus crop in Uruguay both in terms of yield and area. This study is aimed at assessing the environmental impacts of mandarin cultivation in the country to identify the environmental hotspots. Temporal variability is assessed by considering six harvest seasons and site specificity by developing a regionalized inventory using a Tier 3 to estimate nitrogen on-field emissions. Also, the effect of regionalizing specific impact categories is analyzed. Methods: A cradle-to-farm gate assessment was carried out based on mass and area functional units.