DRAFTING
NS Gov Info/Land Use
Subpages
– Overall Land Use & Ownership (This Page)
– Triad Land Distribution
From NS State of the Forest Report 2016, PDF Page 61
In citing land use by percentage, sometimes the percentages refer to the Land-only portion, i.e. excluding “Inland Waters”, and sometimes they do not. In the tables above, the percentages, evidently, were calculated based on the Total area of Land + Inland waters. (There is a small discrepancy (320 ha) in that value between the number given in the top table (5,525,014) and that given in the lower table (5, 524,694)).
Evidently, the ownership percentages were calculated as (Land-Only-Area or Water-Area-Only/Total area of Land+Inland waters), all a bit confusing but mixing or not declaring different units (i.e. including Inland Waters or not including Inland Waters in the figures and calculations) could account for discrepancies of circa 1% or less in these values as cited in various government documents.
Comments on Overall Land Use in the State of the Forest (2016) Report (p3)
“The vast majority of our province is forested. In fact, land use areas (Figure 1.1) show that over 75 per cent of Nova Scotia’s 5.5 million hectares (ha) are dominated by treed vegetation. These 4.2 million ha of forested lands also include areas that are returning to a young forested state after harvesting or for which there is no sign of permanent forest removal by agriculture, urbanization, or other anthropogenic (humaninduced) development. Approximately 7.8 per cent of the province is composed of naturally occurring non-treed ecosystems such as shrublands, beaches, and open woodlands primarily covered by small woody vegetation and herbaceous species. Coastal and inland wetlands account for about 2.9 per cent of the province. Agriculture covers about 4.9 per cent of the province. As per Fernow (1912), agricultural lands once occupied roughly 900 000 ha of the province. Today, only a third of that area remains farmed. The remaining 4.4 per cent of our province encompasses urban areas, the provincial transportation network, and anthropogenic non-forested lands. Urban areas (2.8%) are defined as any area used primarily as residential, industrial, and where related structures such as streets, sidewalks, parking lots, and housing developments prevail. The transportation network (1.1%) is composed of roads, rails, electric transmission corridors, and pipeline corridors. The anthropogenic nonforested land use category (0.5%) is composed of mines, landfills, quarries, and other features.”