In this lab, I explored how the landscape around Edmonton, Alberta has changed from 1966 to 1976. This analysis was conducted in two parts: (1) visualizing land use distribution and mapping changes over the 10-year period using Geographic Information System, and (2) quantifying and measuring land use patterns through a set of landscape metrics calculated by FRAGSTATS. FRAGSTATS is a set of spatial statistics for landscape ecology that facilitates the evaluation of landscape processes. Class and landscape level metrics were utilized in this analysis.

Edmonton had witnessed rapid urbanization which has brought on fundamental agricultural land use change between 1966 and 1976. As shown in the Transition Matrix (Table 1), the conversions between urban land, cropland and productive woodland were the major change types that compromised 61% of the total area changes. Accordingly, urban land has altogether increased by 35399 ha or 181 % in area, while cropland has decreased by 21559 ha or 8% in the area.

Table 1: Transition matrix that shows how the land uses changed over time in Edmonton, 19966-1976

As shown in Map 1, rural-to-urban land conversion—especially that from cropland and unimproved grazeland—had extended mainly from original urban centers. This pattern can be explained by the proximity of these two land uses to traditional urban centers and the provision of ample easy-to-developed greenfield land. Former agricultural land was thus annexed to the City of Edmonton to accommodate the anticipated population growth. In addition, while the total area of cropland and improved pasture and forage crops decreased substantially, the number of patches increases by 130 and 38 respectively. This implies that patch sizes became smaller and more scattered in 1976.

Map 1: Land use map of the City of Edmonton, Alberta in 1977

Another interesting observation I found was that while large-scale agricultural activities dropped, horticulture emerged during 1966-1976 to serve as a secondary source of local food for Edmonton. Horticulture falls under the umbrella of agriculture but operates on a much smaller scale, such as gardening. Although the absolute area increase in horticulture is small (727 ha), it constituted a 3161% rise. Within which, 84% of the land was converted from former cropland. Horticulture, however, has lower operation extent and thus lower production capacity, than cropland due to their fragmented nature. It has the greatest drop in connectance index of -8.63% as well as the largest increase in the number of patches (780%).