OCUPACIÓN Y TRANSFORMACIÓN DEL SUELO DE LAS CARRETERAS ESPAÑOLAS

Abstract

The term ‘land use’ is traditionally used to denote a classification of human activities which occupy land area. In the field of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), the terms ‘land use’ or ‘land use impact’ have been used to designate the environmental impacts related to physical occupation and transformation of geographic areas. Our study focuses on the calculation of land surface occupation attributed to Spanish roads, stressing the discrepancy of results determined by the choice of data source. Occupation values are subsequently used to calculate temporal occupation and transformation values of soil into roadways. Transformation values can be incorporated into LCAs of this type of infrastructures, since they can be expressed in terms of vehicle flow. Finally, the need to consider the potential territorial fragmentation and implications on land productivity during road planning is highlighted. Keywords: Land Use, Occupation, Transformation, Roads, Land Fragmentation