Land-Use References

Logging to Supply Timber vs. Logging to Supply Water Is there a Difference?

Nigel Douglas

In all of the long-drawn-out, at times acrimonious disputes over logging in Alberta’s southern Eastern Slopes, one question has continued to baffle observers. Why has the Alberta government, despite all of the mounting opposition, been so determined to push ahead with logging these precious watersheds when the economic benefits are so minimal and the environmental costs so high? One possible answer to that question has been hinted at in recent comments from government spokesmen in the media. What if the government is indeed logging full speed to maximize resource extraction from the forest, but the primary focus is not on the production of timber, but on the production of water? If you have a tunnel-vision focus on managing forests to supply one thing – be it timber or water – then other things, including wildlife and recreation are likely to suffer. This seems to be the case in Alberta.

Literature Review of Selected Best Management Practices Specific to Agricultural Practices in Red-Assiniboine River Watersheds

Stephanie Melles

Leverage Points: Places to intervene in a system

Donella H. Meadows

What you are about to read is a work in progress. It's not a simple, sure-fire recipe for finding leverage points. Rather, it's an invitation to think more broadly about the many ways there might be to get systems to change.

Land and Water Impacts of Oil Sands Production in Alberta

Sarah Jordaan

Review of the Land and Water Impacts of Oil Sands Productions in Alberta

Land Advocate: News for Canadians living with oil and gas production

Andrew Nikiforuk

A democratic voice for landowners and the land. An advocate for more 100,000 farmers, ranchers and landowners in Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia. We'll separate the oil from the gas to give you the best and most informed perspective on what's right and what's wrong in the oil patch.

Lake Simcoe Basin’s Natural Capital: The Value of the Watershed’s Ecosystem Services

Sara J. Wilson

This study quantifies the natural capital value of the ecosystem goods and services provided by Lake Simcoe’s watershed, a section of which is located in Ontario’s Greenbelt. At a minimum estimated worth of $975 million per year, the services provided by the watershed are worth $2,780 to each of the 350,000 permanent residents annually. This study represents the first application of this methodology to a watershed in southern Ontario. Goods and services provided by ecosystems are traditionally undervalued as they go unmeasured by conventional economics. These benefits include storage of floodwaters by wetlands, air pollution absorption, climate regulation, pollination of crops and water filtration, resulting in clean air and water and safe and abundant local food sources. In order to measure the value of these benefits, this study first describes the watershed’s natural assets – that is, the extent of the forests, wetlands, grasslands, water bodies, agricultural lands and urban or built-up areas. Then, using market-determined values (e.g. the avoided increased costs of a man-made water filtration service as a proxy for the existing capabilities of a natural system to filter water), the study was able to quantify many of the goods and services that are provided by the watershed.

Integrated Place-Based Approaches for Sustainable Development

The Policy Research Institute

Place-based approaches address social, environmental or economic issues and thus offer the promise of operationalizing Sustainable Development (SD) principles. By focusing attention on policy issues as they play out in concrete geographic and community settings, place-based approaches provide a means to grasp complex and sometimes unexpected connections. This issue of Horizons provides a sense of the diversity of place-based approaches as they are applied in different policy areas, and identifies some of the lessons learned from an SD perspective.

Integrated Landscape Management Tools for Sustainable Development Policy Making

Policy Research Initiative

Sustainable Development Briefing Note

Integrated Landscape Management Modelling Workshop

Policy Research Institute

Sound land-use decision-making requires that social, economic, and environmental values be balanced, and that any repercussions within these three areas due to a decision taken in another be identified and taken into account. Land-use planning and environmental impact assessments (both aspects of integrated landscape management) could be improved, and the decision-making process better informed, through the use of integrated landscape management models (ILMM).

Institutional requirements for watershed cumulative effects assessment and management: Lessons from a Canadian trans-boundary watershed

Poornima Sheelanere, Bram F. Noble, Robert J. Patrick

Watersheds are under increasing stress from the cumulative environmental effects of water and land use disturbances caused by both anthropogenic and natural causes. Yet, while the science of watershed cumulative effects assessment and management (CEAM) is advancing much less is known about the institutional and capacity requirements to implement and sustain watershed CEAM. Based on lessons from a transboundary watershed in western Canada this paper presents eight institutional requirements, or requisites, for the implementation of watershed-based CEAM. We suggest that effective watershed CEAM requires government leadership to move beyond the current inward focus on project approvals toward an outward focus on the cumulative effects of all disturbances in a watershed; complementary monitoring programs at the project and watershed scale, and a means to ensure the sharing of monitoring data across watershed stakeholders; and a nested planning framework to coordinate watershed planning objectives with individual project impact assessment and decision making. Results of this paper show that simply scaling up from individual project-based assessments to the watershed scale exposes many institutional constraints that can impede CEAM action.