Land
and Soils
The land and soils cluster group will investigate
the development of indicators linked to Canada's land stocks.
It will examine three dimensions of land:
- Agricultural land and the productivity of
soils;
- The contribution of land as a source of space
for economic activity to operate and for terrestrial ecosystems
to function;
- The health of terrestrial ecosystems (with
the exception of forested ecosystems, which is covered by
the cluster group on renewable resources).
Specifically, this group will be asked to:
- Develop stock indicators linked to the amount
of dependable agricultural land. This work will be based
on Statistics Canada's land account in its system of natural
resource accounts,
- Develop indicators of agricultural soil
quality (e.g. physical measures such as erosion, measures
of fertility, and measures of contamination such as by pesticides
or fertilizers),
- Examine the feasibility of developing indicators
of land use change, and/or examining stocks of land as 'space'
available for productive and ecosystem services,
- Examine the feasibility of a national indicator
of the health of non-forested terrestrial ecosystems such
as wetland and grasslands ecotypes, with an emphasis on
physical degradation and/or loss (e.g. biological diversity,
endangered species, protected areas), and
- Develop indicators of inputs of soil pollutants
and solid wastes, in terms of the demand created for the
ecosystem service of waste assimilation.
The group will be asked to consider how to incorporate
a spatial dimension into the data underlying the recommended
indicators.
For each sub-domain of land use, agricultural
soil and terrestrial ecosystem health, the group will be asked
to recommend no more than three indicators, and to designate
one preferred indicator to the Steering Committee.
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