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 The
Prince Edward Island Department of
Agriculture and Forestry boasts the
Land-On-Line application, developed
by Baseline Business Geographics Inc.,
which combines soil mapping, property
mapping, road centre line files, forest
outlines and water attribute data.
Using the application, farmers can
visualize information relating to
their farmland that allows them to
easily adhere to legislation and support
the sustainability of the province’s
resources.
Background
Farming is
PEI’s largest industry and provides
a large source of income to the province.
In recent years, however, government,
the public and farmers have been increasingly
concerned with potential negative
effects of some farming practices.
Soil erosion, stream sedimentation,
chemical water pollution and fish
kills caught both public and political
attention. It had been clearly demonstrated
that some farming activities on land
had the potential to negatively affect
life on rivers, lakes and estuaries.
In effort
to amend the situation, the provincial
government passed two new pieces of
legislation:
- Prevent
persons farming from disturbing
soil or cutting trees within a buffer
zone along water bodies/courses.
The size of the buffer varies upon
slope, type of water body, type
of vegetative cover around streams.
- Prohibits
farming of row crops of slopes greater
than 9%.
Problem
During the
industry consultation process, the
government quickly realized that farmers
recognized problems and were willing
to comply. But in order to act in
accordance with the legislation, they
needed to be able to know what parts
of their farm there are restrictions
upon (e.g. not allowed to farm on).
The farmers’
challenge to the Minister of Agriculture
was in their ability to be able to
see where and how much of their land
is affected by regulations. The Minister
took this challenge back to his GIS
department and posed the question
of how to get the appropriate information
out to the farmers. The GIS department
provided him with two options:
- Have staff
in district offices equipped with
MapInfo and a plotter to plot off
maps of farmlands for farmers. A
quick analysis of the process determined
that it would not be feasible because
of the cost of staff and the cost
of printing thousands of maps annually.
- With a
self-service approach, a farmer
could go on-line from his home or
office and, in a secure environment,
type in his username and password.
After doing this, the user would
have digital maps of his farms fields
appear with the slope of land and
restricted buffers clearly indicated.
The Minister
chose the second option for several
reasons: 1) There is a high rate of
Internet use in the farming community;
2) The deployment is cost effective;
and 3) Users are able to manage the
information and keep it current.
Solution
The Department
of Agriculture and Forestry are early
innovators in GIS technology, using
it to manage PEI’s resource
lands. Over the past number of years,
they have mapped the entire province
with applicable data (e.g. land use
forest inventories for 1980, 1990,
and 2000). Baseline Business Geographics
Inc. developed a mapping solution
for the Department and farmers that
provided fast and easy access to the
proper information, which allows for
enhanced communication and decision-making
between all parties involved. The
solution combines digital contours
soil mapping, property mapping, road
centre line files, forest outlines
and water attribute data, such as
rivers, lakes and water bodies. Other
geographic details can be integrated
into the application as the Department’s
needs change.
The application
also enables users to see digital
ortho-imagery (air photos) of their
farms, contours, soils mapping, field
boundaries, road centre line files
and associated attribute data. The
Department of Agriculture and Forestry
sees value in this application not
only because it is a cost-effective
way to disseminate information to
key players in the industry, but also
because the Department’s staff
and extension workers can use in their
existing system. The Department is
currently in the process of rolling
out the system to every farmer on
Prince Edward Island.
Since the
implementation of Land On-Line in
October of 2002, the Department has
identified and applied many other
uses for their high-end on-line mapping
tool, including providing information
to land owners and land managers in
the forestry sector. The application
has also been adapted to provide slope
calculation functionality and soil
loss calculation.
Later incorporated
in Baseline’s Land On-Line application
was an early, rapid warning system
used to notify farmers in the event
of a farming crisis, such as potato
wart or foot and mouth disease. The
Department can select all farmers
with fields within a specific distance
of an incident. It can then notify
them by e-mail, fax or telephone as
to what measures to take in order
to minimize the negative impact of
the incident.
Baseline created
the application so that only secure
users could access the information
with a username and password. Different
levels of staff and farmers have access
to different types of information
according to their username and password.
The
implementation of this efficient system
saves the Department both time and
money, and improves farming practices
and record keeping. Farmers no longer
have to worry about using out-of-date
maps, as updates and new data layers
can be added to the application without
having to reissue maps. The time to
produce maps is greatly reduced, and
with the cohesive effort of farmers
and the Department of Agriculture,
the province is on its way to restoring
its valuable resources.
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“Land-On-Line
provides extensive amounts
of information that collectively
affect the sustainability
of our land's natural
resources,” affirms
Brian Douglas, Director
of Agriculture Resource
for the Department of
Agriculture, Fisheries,
Aquaculture & Forestry.
“This advanced
mapping application allows
farmers to see where and
how much of their land
is affected by regulations,
which considerably heightens
their insight into many
important environmental
and agricultural issues.”
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