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Incorporating Biogeochemical Cycles and Utilizing Complexity Theory for Sustainability Analysis

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Incorporating Biogeochemical Cycles and Utilizing Complexity Theory for Sustainability Analysis Dissertation Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Shweta Singh, B.Tech., M.A.S., M.S. Graduate Program in Chemical and Bio-molecular Engineering The Ohio State University 2012 Dissertation Committee: Bhavik R. Bakshi, Advisor James F. Rathman Jay Martin Michael Paulaitis c Copyright by Shweta Singh 2012 Abstract Sustainability assessment is a multidisciplinary complex problem and requires techniques that can address the unique requirements of solving such complex issues. This dissertation addresses the complexity of problem by developing novel assessment techniques, inventory and methodologies for decision making. Ecological systems support functioning of human-built systems by providing several ecosystem services classified as provisioning, regulating, supporting and cultural. There has been tremen- dous degradation of these services over past decade which can be attributed to lack of accounting of these services in supporting the production of human systems. This led to the development of Ecologically Based Life Cycle Assessment (Eco-LCA) earlier, which accounts for the role of ecosystem services in Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) technique. However, the accounting method was limited to the easily quantifiable components such as energy resources, materials and few supporting services. This limitation motivated integration of biogeochemical cycles with Eco-LCA in this work to account for the role of these cycles in supporting economic activities utilizing the Eco-LCA model. Specifically, the Carbon and Nitrogen cycles have been integrated with US economy and a life cycle inventory has been developed that can account for the role of different components of these cycles in LCA studies. The developed framework can be easily applied to other cycles such as phosphorus. ii Another limitation of several sustainability assessment techniques is lack of dy- namic insights about stability or fragility of the systems under consideration which is crucial for sustainability assessment. This dissertation proposes new ways of deriv- ing such insights from already available inventory for systems using network analysis techniques. For this, the tools of network analysis as utilized in complexity have been proposed. Metrics of indegrees and outdegrees are proposed to study the con- trolling nodes which showed that total through flow analysis hides controlling nodes for propagating resource dependency. In case of gasoline the sectors to focus on for coal dependency are coal mining, power generation & supply and rail transporta- tion whereas for corn-ethanol the critical sectors are coal mining, power generation & supply and iron & steel mills. In terms of flow structure, the results indicate a preference to corn-ethanol production in case of coal, oil, iron and water disruption in the economy whereas a preference to gasoline production in case of farmland & fertilizer disruption. Ascendency and reserve measure show that gasoline network is more prone to disruption by coal, oil and iron scarcity whereas corn-ethanol is more prone to disruption by water, farmland and fertilizer. Life cycle data quality and lack of data for ecosystem services pose great challenges in making sustainability decisions. These challenges have been addressed in this work in two ways - data rectification for improving the quality of already available data and proposing a new LCA approach termed as Qualitative Eco-LCA (qEco- LCA) that can utilize qualitative information about reliance on ecosystem services for decision making. Data rectification is based on earlier work of LCI rectification and an algorithm is proposed to include external information for improving LCI that can be easily understood by practitioners. Qualitative Eco-LCA (qEco-LCA) combines iii the World Resources Institute (WRIs) tool for ESR (Ecosystem Services Review) with Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Quality Function Deployment (QFD) to conduct LCA for services such as climate regulation, air quality regulation etc. which are difficult to quantify. The qEco-LCA approach will be able to capture the role of those ecosystem services which are function of multiple ecosystem components and are ignored by other LCA methods due to lack of metrics. iv This is dedicated to My Advisor, Dr Bhavik R. Bakshi, My Parents and Women of India v Acknowledgments My first deepest gratitude is towards my advisor Dr. Bhavik R. Bakshi for his guidance, constant encouragement, motivation to explore beyond boundaries and enthusiasm infused towards research. His technical expertise, wide range of knowledge and insights about problems facing society that need solutions have made possible the interdisciplinary work presented in this dissertation. I am grateful to him for providing a vision about sustainability and teaching patience required to solve the complex problems of society through science. I would like to thank my Parents for teaching me the virtue of hard work and faith when things are not working. It helped me a lot to get through the arduous life of graduate school away from family. My Dad has been a constant source of inspiration to not give up in face of adversity and keep the goal in vision. I feel blessed to have a role model like him in my life and I dedicate the success of all projects taken up in life to his unrelenting attitude conferred to me as genetic gift. The unconditional love of my Mom has always been the shelter to rest while walking throughout the graduate school. Thanks to my brothers, Abhinav Singh and Ashutosh Singh for this PhD was impossible without the constant assurance and love provided by them. Partial financial support for this work from the National Science Foundation via Grants, ECS- 0524924 and CBET- 0829026 is gratefully acknowledged. I would also like to thank Department of Chemical and Bio-molecular Engineering for providing vi support and a foundation to build my research career. I would like to acknowledge Professors James F. Rathman, Michael Paulaitis, Jay F. Martin and Brian D. Fath for providing feedback and suggestions on my work. Special gratitude to numer- ous researchers at US - Environmental Protection Agency for generously providing databases that I used in this research and answering queries on same. I would like to thank Lori E. Apadaca and Norman E. Spahr at USGS for answering specific queries on nitrogen database provided by USGS. Further, Dr. Jana Compton and Dr. Daniel Sobota at US-EPA, Western Ecology Division are acknowledged for their feedback on Nitrogen work in this dissertation. Dr Joseph Fiksel and Mr. Alan J. Horn at The Center for Resilience, OSU are gratefully acknowledged for generously providing access to By-Product Synergy Network data. I would also like to thank Dr Fiksel, Dr Rathman, Dr Paulaitis and Dr Martin for writing recommendation letters for my attendance to summer schools and research positions that has helped me increase my breadth of knowledge. Santa Fe Institute is gratefully acknowledged for providing me a scholarship and opportunity to attend the Complex Systems Summer School that added to my academic pursuits and provided me the opportunity to interact with complex system scientists. I would like to acknowledge my colleagues Dr. Yi Zhang, Dr. Vikas Khanna, Dr Anil Baral, Dr. Jun-Ki Choi, Dr. Geoffry Grubb, Ms. Laura Merugula, Ms. Erin Landers, Mr. Robert Urban, Ms. Rebecca Hanes, Ms. Berrin Kurusn and Mr. Nathan Cruze for providing constructive feedbacks and thoughtful discussions during meetings. I am specifically thankful to Dr. Yi Zhang for doing early work on Ecologically Based Life Cycle Assessment (Eco-LCA) and for being available always for queries. vii I am thankful to my ex-roommates Ms Vasudha Gupta, Dr. Anusha Chilukuri, Ms Niranjani Deshpande and Ms Ganita Bhupal for numerous cooking breaks, singing times and intellectual discussions beyond chemical engineering. It has helped me grow in vision about the issues in society that need attention. I am thankful to a great pool of friends who provided mini-India in the Department of Chemical Engineering and made my stay here pleasant : Dr. Vikas Khanna, Dr. Somnath Sinha, Dr. Preshit Gawade, Dr. Ashutosh Bhabhe, Mr Shreyas Rao, Mr Karthik Ramasubramanian, Ms Deepika Singh, Mr Nihar Phalak, Mr Prateik Singh, Mr Harshad Pathak, Mr Kalpesh Mahajan, Mr Mandar Kathe, Mr. Viraj Modak and Mr. Anshuman Fuller. At the end I would like to thank my friends from IIT-BHU who have been con- stantly with me for a decade and have unconditionally supported me in my decisions, helped in tough times and believed in me. My unending thanks to Dr. Ritu Bajpai, Ms Ankita Agarwal, Ms Shruti Pandey, Ms Surbhi Sharma, Ms Ankita Gupta, Mr Vivek Singh, Mr Yogendra Narayan Pandey, Mr Sudeep Tandon and Mr Abhishek Shukla. I am blessed to have such friends. viii Vita December 23, 1983 . Born - Varanasi, UP, India 2002-2006 . B. Tech Chemical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, BHU Varanasi, India 2006-2007 . Associate Technology, Sapient Corporation, Bangalore, India 2009-2011 . M.A.S, Department of Statistics, The Ohio State University Columbus, OH, USA 2007-present . .Graduate Research Associate, Department of Chemical and Bio- molecular Engineering, The Ohio State University Columbus, OH, USA Publications Research Publications Y. Zhang, S. Singh and B. R. Bakshi \Accounting for Ecosystem Services in Life Cycle Assessment, Part I : A Critical Review". Environmental Science and Technology, 44(7):2232-2242, 2010. S. Singh and B. R. Bakshi \Eco-LCA: A tool for quantifying the role of ecological resources in LCA". Sustainable Systems and Technology, ISSST, IEEE Conference Proceedings, 2009. S. Singh and B. R. Bakshi \Enhancing the reliability of C and N accounting in eco- nomic activities : Integration of bio-geochemical cycles with Eco-LCA". Sustainable Systems and Technology, ISSST, IEEE Conference Proceedings, 2010. ix S. Singh and B. R. Bakshi \Insights into sustainability from complexity analysis of life cycle networks: A case study on gasoline and bio-fuel networks".
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