This book describes and analyses the provincial government's role in municipal and regional planning. The conversion of farmland to urban and other uses is discussed, as are the issues raised by the reports of the Ontario Planning Act Review Committee and the Federal/Provincial Task Force on the Supply and Price of Serviced Residential Land and the province's Green Paper on Planning for Agriculture. The authors criticize the government's failure to conduct cost-benefit studies before setting up planning programs and show that there is little factual basis for recent alarm over the disappearance of farmland. Data gathered here for the first time show that the conversion of agricultural land to built-up urban use and non-farm rural residential use in Ontario has been taking place quite slowly in view of the rate of productivity increase in agriculture, the stock of agricultural land, and the decline in the acreage of census farms. Economists will find in this book a useful survey of recent trends and policies. Planners, policy-makers, and students will welcome this detailed case study of how economic analysis ought to be used in formulating land use policies.
A tale of deception and adversity, Hardscrabble tells how unscrupulous politicians, emigration agents, and philanthropists lured impoverished emigrants to farm the Muskoka backwoods in the 1870s. What these new settlers weren't told was that their land was situated on the rocky Canadian Shield.
"Upholding the high standard of quality set by the previous edition, this two-volume second edition offers a vast array of recent peer-reviewed articles. It showcases research and practices with added sections on ISTIC-World Soil Information, root growth and agricultural management, nitrate leaching management, podzols, paramos soils, water repellant soils, rare earth elements, and more. With hundreds of entries covering tillage, irrigation, erosion control, ground water, and soil degradation, the book offers quick access to all branches of soil science, from mineralology and physics, to soil management, restoration, and global warming."--Publisher's website.
Ontario is the most populous and most prosperous province in Canada. One-third of the nation's population lives here. They produce more than one-half of Canada's manufactured goods, one-quarter of her output from mines and forests, and one-third of the farm income. Accompanying this economic pre-eminence is a majestic primeval geography. Ontario extends through sixteen degrees of latitude and a distance of over 1600 kilometres from barren tundra along a saltwater shoreline in the north to fertile lowlands bordering freshwater lakes in the south. Productivity and size, two of the basic elements in the geography of the province, stand in contradiction to one another. The former is concentrated in a very small area with an identity and even a name of its own, 'Southern Ontario,' a portion of the province that is as overwhelming in its concentration of activity as the remainder is in its areal extent. The recognition of this distinction is a prerequisite to the further study of a subject which has been widely neglected, both in Ontario and in the rest of Canada. Writers and artists, historians and geographers have paid little attention to the province. It is a baffling region, one which 'has achieved a significant place in the Canadian sun, but no one quite knows what the place is, even though other areas would like to achieve the same position' (Warkentin 1966). The purpose of this short volume is to contribute to an understanding of Ontario, to point out something of what it is both to those who are already acquainted with the province and to those who are being introduced to it for the first time.
This book is designed to present those principles and techniques for land appraisal which are applicable to all developing countries. Examples of specific situations in which these techniques have been or might be adopted are taken primarily from monsoonal and equatorial Asia. It is in this region that the land/food/population problem is most acute. It is also the writer's region of specialization; over the past ten years out of a total of some twenty-five years working in or closely concerned with Asia, an attempt has been made to examine the major problems ofland potential in relation to rural economy and nutrition in the whole region, and in particular to show to what extent its different parts resemble or differ from each other. The geographical scope comprises mainland southern, southeast and east Asia, from Pakistan to the People's Republic of China and Korea, with the insular monsoonal and equatorial lands of Sri Lanka, Indonesia, East Malaysia, Philippines, Taiwan and Japan (part). International and bilateral agencies and specialists outside Asia repeatedly insist that Asia must learn to feed itself from the produce of its own land, or from imported foods paid for by the exports of primary and secondary commodities and of manufactured products to the developed world.
Authored by world-class scientists and scholars, The Handbook of Natural Resources, Second Edition, is an excellent reference for understanding the consequences of changing natural resources to the degradation of ecological integrity and the sustainability of life. Based on the content of the bestselling and CHOICE-awarded Encyclopedia of Natural Resources, this new edition demonstrates the major challenges that the society is facing for the sustainability of all well-being on the planet Earth. The experience, evidence, methods, and models used in studying natural resources are presented in six stand-alone volumes, arranged along the main systems of land, water, and air. It reviews state-of-the-art knowledge, highlights advances made in different areas, and provides guidance for the appropriate use of remote sensing and geospatial data with field-based measurements in the study of natural resources. Volume 2, Landscape and Land Capacity, covers soils and landscape issues, their diversity and importance, and how soils are related to the landscapes in which they form. It includes discussions on land conservation, land-use and land-cover changes, and urban environments and unravels the complex bond between humans and soils. New in this edition are discussions on habitat conservation and planning, landscape epidemiology and vector-borne disease, and landscape patterns and changes. This volume demonstrates the key processes, methods, and models used through several practical case studies from around the world. Written in an easy-to-reference manner, The Handbook of Natural Resources, Second Edition, as individual volumes or as a complete set, is an essential reading for anyone looking for a deeper understanding of the science and management of natural resources. Public and private libraries, educational and research institutions, scientists, scholars, and resource managers will benefit enormously from this set. Individual volumes and chapters can also be used in a wide variety of both graduate and undergraduate courses in environmental science and natural science at different levels and disciplines, such as biology, geography, earth system science, and ecology.