Table A.3
Agricultural land lost to settled area, by soil capability class, by CMA-ecosystem, 1971 to 2011

Table A.3
Agricultural land lost to settled area by soil capability class, by census metropolitan area-ecosystem (CMA-E), 1971 to 2011
Table summary
This table displays the results of Agricultural land lost to settled area by soil capability class Agricultural land, Canada Land Inventory - Soil capability for agriculture, Agricultural land lost to settled area, 1971 to 2011, Class 1 to 3 – Dependable agricultural land and Class 4 to 6 – Agricultural land with important limitations, calculated using square kilometres units of measure (appearing as column headers).
  Agricultural land, Canada Land Inventory - Soil capability for agriculture Agricultural land lost to settled area, 1971 to 2011Note 1
Class 1 to 3 – Dependable agricultural landNote 2 Class 4 to 6 – Agricultural land with important limitationsNote 3 Class 1 to 3 – Dependable agricultural land Class 4 to 6 – Agricultural land with important limitations
square kilometres
CMA-ecosystem
Abbotsford–Mission 491 732 74 140
Barrie 2,057 755 156 76
Brantford 3,379 547 270 33
Calgary 6,460 5,350 214 119
Edmonton 11,206 7,241 397 144
Greater Sudbury 961 4,246 41 81
Guelph 2,079 303 184 19
Halifax 1,587 460 80 26
Hamilton 4,236 343 602 42
KelownaNote 4 0 94 0 22
Kingston 1,254 1,011 71 59
Kitchener–Cambridge–Waterloo 2,776 199 289 17
London 7,925 289 331 13
Moncton 1,731 3,140 97 37
Montréal 5,580 2,064 533 228
Oshawa 3,013 1,014 344 84
Ottawa–Gatineau (Ont.) 3,793 3,273 234 230
Ottawa–Gatineau (Que.) 1,122 992 83 62
Peterborough 1,401 1,104 76 52
Québec 1,401 1,875 102 126
Regina 13,681 2,171 102 38
Saguenay 819 511 49 29
Saint John 278 2,691 9 86
Saskatoon 9,375 6,595 87 68
Sherbrooke 702 2,880 32 136
St. Catharines–Niagara 2,089 234 204 23
St. John's 4 489 1 74
Thunder Bay 924 2,532 22 71
Toronto 8,505 2,060 1,159 163
Trois-Rivières 1,934 3,510 77 154
Vancouver 321 830 86 226
Victoria 182 170 47 22
Windsor 2,283 37 145 9
Winnipeg 12,850 3,332 223 56
Note 1.

Agricultural land lost to settled area is calculated by overlaying the growth in settled area between 1971 and 2011 on the Canada Land Inventory (CLI): Soil Capability for Agriculture, 1969 base. Does not include agricultural land lost to roads.

Return to note 1 referrer

Note 2.

Dependable agricultural land includes CLI: Soil Capability for Agriculture Class 1 to 3. Class 1 has no significant limitations in use for crops, Class 2 has moderate limitations that require moderate conservation practices and Class 3 has moderately severe limitations that restrict the range of crops or that require special conservation practices.

Return to note 2 referrer

Note 3.

Agricultural land with important limitations includes CLI: Soil Capability for Agriculture Class 4 to 6. Class 4 land is marginal for crop production and requires the use of additional management or conservation practices, Class 5 is capable of permanent pasture and hay and Class 6 is suitable for natural pasture.

Return to note 3 referrer

Note 4.

Data on agricultural land capability were not included in the CLI: Soil Capability for Agriculture. Supplemental data for Kelowna were taken from the British Columbia Land Inventory.

Return to note 4 referrer

Notes: CMA-E are not spatially mutually exclusive—they overlap where a SLC polygon crosses more than one CMA boundary, as is the case in Vancouver and Abbotsford–Mission or Toronto and surrounding CMAs including Hamilton, Oshawa, Kitchener–Cambridge–Waterloo, Guelph and Brantford and Barrie. For this reason, CMA-E data cannot be summed to generate a total and caution should be used when comparing data. See CMA-E maps in Section 3: Ecosystem accounts and statistics by census metropolitan area for a visual representation of the CMA-E boundaries. This classification of soil capability for agriculture only covered mineral (not organic) soils. Class 7 land has no capability for arable culture or permanent pasture, but may or may not have a high capability for trees, native fruit, wildlife or recreation.
Sources: Statistics Canada, Environment, Energy and Transportation Statistics Division, 2016, special tabulation of data from Natural Resources Canada (NRCan), Canada Centre for Remote Sensing (CCRS), 1999, Canada Land Inventory (CLI) Level I Lat/Long Digital Data: Soil Capability for Agriculture (1969) (1:250,000 and 1:50,000), ftp://ftp2.cits.rncan.gc.ca/pub/geott/cli_250k/agriculture/ and ftp://ftp2.cits.rncan.gc.ca/pub/geott/cli_50k/agriculture (accessed October 16, 2015); NRCan, CCRS, 1999, CLI Level II UTM Digital Data: Soil Capability for Agriculture (circa 1969) (Cities - 1:50,000), ftp://ftp2.cits.rncan.gc.ca/pub/geott/cli_50k/city_agriculture; NRCan, CCRS, 1999, CLI Level-I Lat/Long Digital Data: CLI Land Use (circa 1966), ftp://ftp2.cits.rncan.gc.ca/pub/geott/cli_250k/landuse/ (accessed September 15, 2015); NRCan, CCRS, 1999, Canada Land Use Monitoring Program (CLUMP) UTM Digital Data: CLUMP Land Use (1971) (1:50,000), ftp://ftp2.cits.rncan.gc.ca/pub/geott/clump/clump_1971/ (accessed September 15, 2015); Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, 2015, Land Use 1990, 2000 and 2010, http://open.canada.ca/data/en/dataset/18e3ef1a-497c-40c6-8326-aac1a34a0dec (accessed September 16, 2015); Provincial Agricultural Land Commission, 2015, Maps and GIS, www.alc.gov.bc.ca/alc/content/alr-maps/maps-and-gis (accessed October 16, 2015).


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© Minister of Industry, 2016

Catalogue no. 16-201-X

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