Abstract
Alvar landscapes are "areas of dry
grassland growing on thin soils over a limestone substrate," (Ontario
Ministry of Natural Resources, 1998) that are highly concentrated,
globally, in the Ontario Great Lakes region, particularly on Manitoulin
Island. This uncommon and underprotected habitat type
characteristically hosts numerous endangered, rare or disjunct
species of plants and animals. Manitoulin Island's small
population and relative isolation make
this location a prime target for Alvar conservation initiatives. This
research seeks to identify land suitable for conservation
and then target and prioritize suitable parcels of land using
a
GIS-based model that incorporates Weighted Overlay and Multiple
Criteria Evaluation (MCE) techniques to assess land conservation
suitability, anthropogenic risk factors, and physical characteristics.
The factors used for analysis were identified in academic
literature and include distance to
anthropogenic disturbances (E.G: roads, urban centers and agriculture),
proportion of Alvar land cover per evaluation parcel, mean parcel
disturbance values,
presence of catalogued Alvar sites, parcel area, proximity from parcel
centroids to the nearest shoreline, and the
proximity of parcels to native reservations and government park as the
main research variables. Using this approach,
the model identified three parcels of land covering 416km2 which are the most suitable areas for Alvar conservation
initiatives on Manitoulin Island.
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