Alongside the steep reductions needed in fossil fuel emissions, natural climate solutions (NCS) represent readily deployable options that can contribute to Canada’s goals for emission reductions. We estimate the mitigation potential of 24 NCS related to the protection, management, and restoration of natural systems that can also deliver numerous co-benefits, such as enhanced soil productivity, clean air and water, and biodiversity conservation. NCS can provide up to 78.2 (41.0 to 115.1) Tg CO2e/year (95% CI) of mitigation annually in 2030 and 394.4 (173.2 to 612.4) Tg CO2e cumulatively between 2021 and 2030, with 34% available at ≤CAD 50/Mg CO2e. Avoided conversion of grassland, avoided peatland disturbance, cover crops, and improved forest management offer the largest mitigation opportunities. The mitigation identified here represents an important potential contribution to the Paris Agreement, such that NCS combined with existing mitigation plans could help Canada to meet or exceed its climate goals.

Landscape planning in settled landscapes includes identifying larger areas of natural vegetation to be conserved protected and/or managed for various environmental and public services. These "green backbones" of the landscape, called Natural Heritage Systems (NHS) in the settled landscapes of southern Ontario, Canada, should have appropriate land use planning and natural areas management actions and related policies to protect and enhance biodiversity and ecological functions. As such, an NHS should be derived using a rigorous and defensible methodology while ensuring public involvement and input during this process. This paper describes the methodology for regional NHS design currently being implemented by OMNR in collaboration with numerous conservation partners and municipalities in southern Ontario. The methodology combines the principles and methods of landscape planning, conservation planning, and spatial analysis, while ensuring that the process is adaptable and repeatable over time and different scales. For each landscape, explicit and transparent conservation objectives, features and targets are identified based on stakeholder inputs. Numerous conservation and restoration objectives are translated into explicit quantitative targets for each analysis unit, and a mathematical optimization algorithm is used to represent all the targets at minimal cost (least land area). The methodology is illustrated using examples from a pilot study in Ecodistrict 7E-5 with some references to ongoing NHS implementation projects as well as potential applications of this method.Key words: biodiversity targets, ecological function targets, ecological restoration, fragmentation, Natural Heritage System, landscape ecology, landscape planning, Marxan, protected areas, simulated annealing algorithm, scenario analysis, southern Ontario, spatial conservation prioritization, systematic conservation planning RÉSUMÉ La planification de l'utilisation du territoire dans un environnement habité comporte l'identification de grandes superficies de végétation naturelle à conserver, à protéger ou encore aménager dans le but de produire divers services environnementaux et publics. Ces « charpentes écologiques » du paysage, que l' on nomme systèmes de patrimoine naturel (SPN) dans les zones habitées du sud de l'Ontario, au Canada, devraient pouvoir compter sur une utilisation du territoire bien planifiée ainsi que sur des activités d'aménagement des zones naturelles et une réglementation spécifiques afin de proté-ger et d'accroître la biodiversité et les fonctions écologiques. Pour créer un SPN il faudrait une méthodologie rigoureuse et crédible, garantissant la participation et l'apport du public tout au long du processus. Cet article décrit la méthodologie qu'utilise présentement MRNO pour la conception d'un SPN régional en collaboration avec différents partenaires de la conservation et des municipalités du sud de l'Ontario. La méthodologie utilise à la fois les principes et méthodes pour planifier l'utilisation du territoire et la ...

Forests patches and forest fragmentation were quantified for seven area municipalities within the Regional Municipality of York for the period from 1975 to 1988. This quantification made it possible to determine the extent of forest changes in space and time. In 1988, forest cover shrank to 30%-50% of its 1975 extent. At the same time, the number of forest patches doubled or tripled and mean patch size and the area of interior (based on a 100 m wide edge) declined indicating a high rate of forest fragmentation.

Protected lands form an essential component of landscape planning, and often extend beyond protection of existing natural areas to consider enhancement through restoration to improve existing conditions. We tested an automated conservation science-based methodology and systematic approach to delineate conservation and restoration priority areas on the Oak Ridges Moraine (ORM). The methodology comprised: a) preparing and assembling existing spatial (GIS) information and tessellating the study area to 5-ha hexagon planning units; b) conducting a gap analysis to provide a basis for setting conservation targets that protect, or that through future restoration activities might enhance, under-represented biodiversity elements; and c) applying a simulated annealing procedure (i.e., mathematical algorithm) to find solutions that optimize the set biodiversity targets. The final output of our work is a map of conservation priority area that enables the more than 50 conservation partners in this landscape to coordinate various conservation, stewardship and restoration activities by focusing on those areas that have the highest conservation value.Key words: restoration, settled landscapes, conservation planning, mathematical algorithm RÉSUMÉ Les terrains protégés forment une base essentielle à la planification du paysage. La protection qu'ils offrent dépasse celles des zones naturelles en ceci que restaurer ces terrains améliore aussi les conditions générales. Nous avons testé une méthode scientifique de conservation automatisée systématique pour délimiter les zones prioritaires de conservation et de restauration sur la moraine d'Oak Ridges (ORM). Cette méthode comprenait : a) la préparation et l'assemblage de l'information spatiale (SIG) existante et la division de la zone d'étude en tesselles hexagonales d'unité de planification de 5 ha ; b) la réalisation d'une étude de carence afin de déterminer des objectifs de conservation en vue de protéger -ou de restauration future en vue d'améliorer -des éléments sous-représentés de la diversité biologique ; et c) l'application d'une procédure simulée d'optimisation (c.-à-d. un algorithme mathématique) pour trouver des solutions qui optimisent l'atteinte des objectifs de conservation de la diversité biologique. Le résultat final se présente sous la forme d'une carte des zones prioritaires de conservation. Plus de 50 partenaires de conservation de cette région pourront ainsi coordonner diverses activités de conservation, d'intendance et de restauration en mettant l'accent sur les zones qui possèdent la valeur de conservation la plus élevée.