Canada’s statistics on land cover and land use change in metropolitan areas Jennie Wang Paper prepared for the 16th Conference of IAOS OECD Headquarters, Paris, France, 19-21 September 2018 Session 3.F., Day 2, 20/09, 10h30: Urbanisation and sustainable cities 1 Jennie Wang
[email protected] Statistics Canada Canada’s statistics on land cover and land use change in metropolitan areas DRAFT VERSION 30/08/2018 Prepared for the 16th Conference of the International Association of Official Statisticians (IAOS) OECD Headquarters, Paris, France, 19-21 September 2018 2 ABSTRACT Ecosystems are affected by changes in land cover and land use. As urbanization progresses in Canada and elsewhere, so too does the interest in quantifying land cover and land use changes in and around cities, particularly from the perspective of urban expansion and densification. The expansion of built-up areas results in the loss of adjacent agricultural and natural and semi- natural land covers. For example, cropland, grasslands, forests and wetlands are replaced by houses, apartment blocks, industrial parks, commercial strips, roads and parking lots. Densification may reduce some of the pressure on agricultural and natural land, but is not without its own challenges including the loss of green space and other amenities within existing settlements. This paper explores Statistics Canada’s recent work on measuring land use change around Canada’s 33 census metropolitan areas. It provides an overview of the methods used to integrate data sources from 1971 to 2011 and discusses limitations including availability of data and comparability over time. Findings and maps from the report Human Activity and the Environment: The changing landscape of Canadian metropolitan areas (Statistics Canada, 2016) are presented, along with new findings from work to extend this methodology to smaller census agglomerations.