Carbon footprint and ecosystem services during the life cycle of woody landscape plants D.L. Ingram 1 , C.R. Hall 2 and J. Knight 1 1 Department of Horticulture, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, USA; 2 Department of Horticulture, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA. Abstract Horticultural crop producers and marketers are increasingly adopting sustainable practices. A sustainable system is often described as being environmentally, economically, and socially sustainable. With a maturing nursery industry, economic sustainability is important and the industry has traditionally sought ways to minimize environmental impacts from production while increasing efficiency to maintain profitability in a maturing market. Understanding the environmental impacts of production system protocols could allow managers to make more informed decisions to increase efficiency, reduce potentially negative impacts, and reduce the associated variable costs. Understanding the ecosystem services of landscape plants could provide information to help market these products to increasingly environmentally-conscious consumers. Woody landscape plants have a modest carbon footprint from production, transport and establishment; however, carbon sequestration during the functional life in the landscape far outweighs the potential impact of those emissions early in the life cycle. For example, the weighted impact of a red maple growing in the landscape for 60 years of a standard 100-year assessment period was calculated as – 666 kg CO2 while the carbon footprint (CF) from propagation to landscape was only 20.9 kg CO2-equivalent. That is more than a 30-fold positive impact on atmospheric CO2 after production and planting in the landscape in addition to positive economic impact. Keywords: life cycle assessment, environmental impact INTRODUCTION The purpose of the presentation and this manuscript is to provide an overview of woody plant production system models and the relative importance of model components on their carbon footprint (CF), or global warming potential (GWP), across several different nursery crops modeled using life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology. The positive impacts of a range of ecosystem services, including carbon sequestration, provided during the functional life of woody plants in the landscape are also presented. Producers, marketers and the consuming public are increasingly seeking information on the environmental impact of products and systems (Yue et al., 2011; Ingram and Hall, 2015b). Greenhouse gases emission (GHG) results from human activities and has been increasing at an increasing rate since the beginning of the industrial revolution. The primary greenhouse gas is carbon dioxide (CO2) and much of the increase in its atmospheric concentration is a result of burning of fossil fuels. The ability of a greenhouse gas to trap and reflect heat back to the earth is referred to as the GWP of that gas. The reference point for GWP of a greenhouse gas is CO2 and its GWP is set at 1 kg CO2 kg -1 of product. Over a 100- year period, the GWP of methane and nitrous oxide are 25 and 298 times that of CO2 respectively (IPCC, 2007), but their concentrations in the atmosphere are much less. The GWP of other gases are expressed in kg CO2-equivalent (CO2e). The CF of a product or activity is the sum total of the GWP of greenhouse gases emitted during its production, useful life, and end of life. The standard timeframe for assessing GWP is 100 years. LCA is a research tool used to analyze a range of environmental impacts of products or services during production, transportation, useful life and end of life activities. LCA protocols Acta Hortic. 1191. ISHS 2018. DOI 10.17660/ActaHortic.2018.1191.19 Proc. III Int. Symp. on Woody Ornamentals of the Temperate Zone Ed.: S.C. Hokanson 139