Evaluate the potential to afforest agricultural corridors
Environment and Climate Change Canada commissioned Habitat to assess the role of agricultural corridors in enhancing ecological connectivity in the St. Lawrence Lowlands.
Agricultural corridors are the uncultivated areas between a watercourse and an agricultural area. These areas are of little use to farmers since the slope is too steep to be cultivated.
Instead of being idle, agricultural corridors can be enhanced by afforestation. By planting trees in these fallow areas, agricultural corridors can play a major role for biodiversity, providing several ecosystem services and improving connectivity of natural areas at the LSTB scale.
As part of this project, Habitat has: (1) identified agricultural corridors, (2) estimated the benefits associated with afforestation of these corridors (carbon storage, control of erosion and agricultural pollutants, pollination) and (3) modeled connectivity at the BTSL scale in order to assess the benefits associated with restoring corridors to promote the movement of forest species.
In particular, our team has developed a methodology for identifying agricultural corridors in BTSLs. This methodology has been used and adapted as part of the Demain la forêt - Infrastructures vertes project to identify corridors throughout Quebec's agricultural territory. The identification of these corridors enables us to prioritize the agricultural corridors to be afforested that will most improve connectivity and increase the contribution of ecosystem services.
The data shown on the map can be found in the downloadable file below. This file also contains a document containing various practices and developments that can be mobilized in agricultural corridors with the aim of encouraging the presence of certain field or forest species. The datasets are licensed under CC_BY_NC_ND v4.0. To find out more
Modeling the benefits associated with the restoration of agricultural corridors in the Yamaska watershed
Reduction in soil erosion costs: $25,000/year
Avoided over $138,000/year in water treatment costs
Increase in carbon storage of 12,840 tonnes after 20 years
Find out more about the benefits of restoring agricultural corridors in the summary sheets below!
Erosion control
Carbon storage
Fight against agricultural pollution
Pollination
