Faculty of Land and Food Systems

Sustainable Agricultural Landscapes Lab

Evaluation of Agricultural Management Scenarios for the Enhancement

of Non-Production Perennial Landscape Features and Carbon Stocks
Project Lead: Anna Rallings
(http://lfs-sal.sites.olt.ubc.ca/people/anna-rallings/) Project Type: MSc Integrated Studies in Land and
Food Systems
Supervisors: Dr. Sean Smukler (http://lfs-sal.sites.olt.ubc.ca/people/sean-smukler/) & Dr. Kent Mullinix
(http://www.landfood.ubc.ca/directory/faculty/alt/kent-mullinix)
The Issue
The mosaics of ecosystem patches across a landscape contain within them a diversity of biological communities
and ecological processes, such as nutrient or energy cycling. The ecosystems and their spatial relationship to one
another – composition (the contents) and configuration (the layout) – have direct influence on the health of the
broader ecology at a landscape scale.
Particularly in areas with extensive human land uses, patches of native vegetation in the landscape can provide
critical sites for species and ecosystem services. These services result from the natural function of ecosystems and
can provide valuable outcomes that human communities benefit from, including nutrient cycling, carbon storage or
water retention. In areas of human land use, these patches are also important permanent and connective habitat
for plants and wildlife. Biodiversity has become a major concern around the world and with increasing land use
change, even habitats disturbed by human proximity –semi-natural –can support conservation efforts and climate
change mitigation through the protection of carbon stocks.
As agricultural land uses have increasingly simplified their landscapes by removing semi-natural land cover and
excluded non-production species through the use of physical or chemical impediments, making farms a barrier to
native community dynamics (Vandermeer & Perfecto 2007, Balmford et al 2012). The Agricultural Land Reserve
(ALR) in British Columbia was established in 1973 for the purpose of protecting the province’s key areas of food
production. In the midst of urban growth in the south western part of the province, ALR parcels represent potentially
valuable locations for connective and sheltering landscape patches of semi-natural perennial woody land cover
composed primarily of shrubs and trees. However, the amount of semi-natural habitat (specifically woodlands and
wetlands) has decreased 10.7% in Metro Vancouver and Fraser Valley between 2006 and 2011 (Agricultural
Census of Canada, 2011). Although the specific fate of these patches is not known, these critical ecosystems and
their related ecosystem services are likely lost to either expanding agricultural production or urbanization.
The Tools
On some agricultural lands, both historic and contemporary, non-production perennial woody vegetation is
maintained by farmers’ management strategies. Two commonly used practices that enhance this vegetation are the
planting and/or maintenance of hedgerows (linear perennial margins) and stream buffers (vegetated zones
surrounding waterways). Organizations such as the Delta Farmland and Wildlife Trust (DFWT) in Delta, BC have
implemented an incentive program for farmers to install/maintain features such as hedgerows and fallow fields. The
Department of Oceans and Fisheries as well as the BC Ministry of Agriculture have guidelines for 15 meter stream
buffer offsets from fish habitats to protect their quality. These policies mean to encourage the use of these
strategies with the assumption that their implementation would have broad ranging benefits.
Previous studies have focused on assessing hedgerows and stream buffers at the farm level, providing an
understanding of the localized effects. Hedgerows and stream buffer systems have the potential to increase the
quantity and structural connectivity of perennial land cover across agricultural lands, however, the amount, type
and distribution may have impacts on their outcomes as well as the amount of agricultural land needed to
implement them.
Landscape ecology investigates the spatial relationships between landscape pattern and ecological process and
has developed useful metrics for the evaluation of landscapes. Metrics of landscape pattern that have been shown
to be highly correlated with terrestrial biodiversity and habitat quality (Uuemaa et al 2009, Walz 2011). In addition to
assessing the identifying potential habitats, these kinds of remote monitoring techniques can be used for estimating
the potential ecosystem services in a region by classifying land cover (Wilson 2010). Landscape ecology,
landscape planning and ecosystem services studies have been refining the tools for assessment of landscapes for
the past several decades and are now beginning to examine how site-scale management affects the landscape
scale. Through the use of satellite imagery, land cover can be quantified, pattern can be analyzed and policy
scenarios can be evaluated.
The Objective
This study will focus on building the framework for quantifying these non-production perennial landscape features,
mapping land cover to assess the extent of these features and build scenarios to understand the potential influence
these features may have on the region if implemented. The outcomes for each scenario include the quantity of non-
production woody perennial land cover, its structural connectivity, the prospective carbon stocks as well as the
change in agricultural land available for production.
 The objective of this study is to investigate these outcomes for each policy scenario and evaluate their
suitability and tradeoffs in the ALR of the Metro Vancouver and Fraser Valley Regional Districts in
southwestern British Columbia.

References:

Balmford, A., Green, R., & Phalan, B. (2012). What conservationists need to know about farming. Proceedings.
Biological sciences / The Royal Society, 279(1739), 2714–24.
BCMAFF, 2003. An Investigation of Existing Vegetative Buffers in BC and Their Effectiveness at Mitigating
Conflict. Resource Management Branch, Abbotsford, BC. 93pp.
Statistics Canada. 2011. Agricultural Census of Canada. [Accessed at http://www.statcan.gc.ca/ ca-ra2011].
Uuemaa, E., Antrop, M., & Marja, R. (2009). Landscape Metrics and Indices : An Overview of Their Use in
Landscape. Living Reviews in Landscape Research, 3, 1–28.
Vandermeer, J., and Perfecto, I. (2007). The agricultural matrix and a future paradigm for
conservation. Conservation biology : the journal of the Society for Conservation Biology, 21(1), 274–7.
Walz, U. (2011). Landscape Structure , Landscape Metrics and Biodiversity. Living Reviews in Landscape
Research, 5(3), 1–35.
Wilson, S.J. (2010). Natural Capital in BC’s Lower Mainland: Valuing the Benefits from Nature. David Suzuki
Foundation, ISBN 978-1-897375-34-1.

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