Ontario Soil Specialist Adam Gillespie explains the information revealed by soil samples taken on the Doris farm outside Keene
On July 5th, over 80 people joined Ontario Minister of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs Jeff Leal, Land Resource Specialists, 20 young 4H club members from Norwood and Peterborough, local farmers and other dignitaries to meet at Dorisdale Farms, home of Carolyn and Peter Doris to discuss a new soil mapping initiative starting close to home. Participants walked the fields to see three sample test holes which revealed the soil type, and in some cases some history, of the fields located on County Rd 2 just west of Keene.
Not many industries are working with planning tools that are older than those using them, but for many in the Agricultural community, this is the case. A few months ago, the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs announced a new initiative to update existing soil maps throughout the province. Funded through the federal-provincial-territorial funding program called Growing Forward 2, new data will be collected to develop accurate soil maps using modern technology which will help farmers adjust their farm management practises based on more accurate information. Precision agricultural tools commonly found on new farm equipment develop and utilize detailed soil maps to maximize the efficiency of field and crop management and will benefit from the greater detail that this program will generate.
The new data base will also help the province develop initiatives to support climate change mitigation and efforts to protect natural water resources.
Land use planning in the country has relied on the maps produced during the 1960’s and 70’s published in the Canada Land Inventory. This tool offers information on 2.5 million square kilometers of land and water through a comprehensive series of more than 1000 maps of rural Canada, describing the land’s capability to support a wide variety of uses, including forestry, wildlife, and recreation, with a particular focus on determining each area’s capacity to sustain agriculture. They include characteristics of soil including texture and drainage as well as identifying sources of non-agricultural material such as gravel deposits. The validity of the information remains fairly solid, and these maps are still widely used for land planning purposes, including developing environmental farm plans to protect premium agricultural land, establishing protective buffer areas and the siting of development and renewable energy projects.
The soil mapping project will begin here in Peterborough County, on the edge of the city of Ottawa, and along the Cochrane to Hearst corridor in northeastern Ontario beginning this summer. Of the $5.1 million directed to this project, $875,000 is allocated to the efforts to develop aerial maps and finance data collection and field logistics and staff in Peterborough County over the next two years.
A range of technologies will be used to develop the maps, but much of the mapping will be conducted using Light Detection and Ranging or LiDAR, remote sensing, Geographic Information System tools and specialized computer software. The project does require some on-site field inspections to confirm the data collected remotely, so they required access to farm properties in the area to allow closer examination of soil features. The field work will be conducted over the next few months, and will be made at times that are convenient to the land user. For most observations, soil survey teams will use small hand tools such as hand auger to retract small soil samples up to three feet below grade and the number of samples per field will vary based on the complexity of the landscape- flat versus rolling, consistent versus varied, etc. In some instances, the sample collection may require drill trucks to extract samples, but in all cases the inspection holes will be backfilled.
All results from any soil sample analysis will be made available to the land owner, and no private information will be released in the resulting soil maps where information on a specific location will be amalgamated with other soil information to create updated maps.
If you are a landowner and would like to collaborate in this project, by granting access to your land, contact Peter Doris at OMAFRA, at 613-475-5604 or through email at peter.doris@ontario.ca. KG
