AGENDA

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AGENDA

• Formal Presentations 7-730
• Introductions Graham Whitelaw
• Tracking the Big Picture Fred Johnson
• Monitoring the Moraine project Debbe Crandall
• Citizen-based monitoring programmes Sonia Dong
• Information mapping and storage needs Fred
  McGarry
• Conservation Priority Areas Kate Potter
• Dialogue and break 10 minutes
• Community Mapping 745 9 pm
• Participant-led sessions with facilitators
• Plenary
• Caring for Your Land Peter Mitchell
• Next Steps
• Dialogue and Evaluation
• Good-byes

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Community Workshop

• Kettleby Pottageville Lions Community Hall
• Lemonville Community Centre
• Centreton Community Centre
• Orono Town Hall
• September 2005, 630 to 900 pm

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Steering Committee

• Mary McGrath and Sonia Dong, Citizens
  Environment Watch
• Debbe Crandall, STORM Coalition
• Fred McGarry, Centre for Community Mapping
• Kate Potter, Oak Ridges Moraine Stewardship
  Partnership Alliance
• Fred Johnson, Enviroscape Consulting
• Graham Whitelaw, University of Waterloo

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Purpose of the MTM Initiative

• Engage and sustain community volunteers and
  organizations in citizen science and monitoring
  that informs
• decision-making on the ORM
• Lead the development of a COMPREHENSIVE
  monitoring
• program for the ORM

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Three Innovations

• COMMUNITY leadership
• INTEGRATION of environmental and policy
  monitoring through leading edge information
  management technology
• DEVELOPMENT of a monitoring framework that makes
  clear EVERYONES roles including government

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Lessons from the Ontario Niagara Escarpment
Monitoring Program

• Positive The COMMUNITY can lead policy
  monitoring of Plan implementation and influence
  decision-making
• Positive Use of a MONITORING FRAMEWORK to guide
  monitoring activities
• Negative WHO DOES WHAT not identified!
• Negative Reliance on government to lead
  monitoring has resulted in a program that has
  been perpetually under-funded

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ONE Monitoring Program Framework
ONE Monitoring Program Framework

OBJECTIVES
Communitys Role? Private Sectors
Role? Governments Role? Role of Universities?
Questions Components Indicators Targets Techniques
Management Actions
Info. Management, Analysis/Reporting

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Agenda

• The BIGGER ORM Picture Fred Johnson
• Overview of the MTM Initiative Debbe
• Overview of POTENTIAL community based monitoring
  programs being considered- Sonia
• INFORMATION MANAGEMENT Fred McGarry
• Community Mapping EXERCISE
• Conservation Priority Areas Kate Potter
• Plenary DISCUSSION/Questions and Answers
• Caring for Your Land Peter Mitchell
• Next STEPS - Debbe

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• A logical response by citizens
• to the
• Oak Ridges Moraine
• Conservation Plan

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Oak Ridges Moraine Conservation Plan

• A Citizens Primer

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History

• A true product of citizens action
• Approved April 22,2002
• An Environment First Plan
• MTM believes that in order to ensure the Plan
  works, citizens need to be involved in its
  implementation

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Basic Direction of the ORMCP

• The Vision for the Oak Ridges Moraine
• The Ontario government's vision for the Oak
  Ridges Moraine is that of "a continuous band of
  green rolling hills that provides form and
  structure to south-central Ontario, while
  protecting the ecological and hydrological
  features and functions that support the health
  and well-being of the region's residents and
  ecosystems".

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Plan Objectives

• Maintain, improve or restore ecological and
  hydrological integrity of the Oak Ridges Moraine
  Area
• Maintain a continuous natural landform
• Compatible land and resource uses and development
  
• Development within existing urban settlement
  areas
• Continuous recreational trail
• Public access

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Land Use Policies of the ORMCP

• Natural Core Areas
• Natural Linkage Areas
• Countryside Areas
• Settlement Areas
• 62 of Oak Ridges Moraine protected through
  Natural Core and Natural Linkage Areas

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Implementation

• Official Plans of municipalities
• Zoning By-law of municipalities
• Tree cutting and site alteration Bylaws
• Watershed Plans
• Water Budget
• ORM Foundation - land securement, stewardship
• Monitoring
• 10 Year Review-scheduled 2014

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Provincial Role in monitoring

• Government is required under Plan to
• Monitor effectiveness of policies
• Establish a monitoring network
• To assess changes in the ecological integrity
  of the Moraine
• To help identify improvements that would
  address problems encountered in implementing the
  Plan
• The government is not moving forward in meeting
  its responsibilities.

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What is Monitoring the Moraine?

• A partnership between environmental monitoring,
  policy monitoring and web-based data management
• Designed to engage citizens to become effective
  agents in protecting the Oak Ridges Moraine
• Challenges
• Monitoring 31 municipal OPs!
• No provincial oversight established
• Taking an Oak Ridges Moraine Wide Perspective

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MTM contd

• Monitoring results will be measured against the
  policies of the Oak Ridges Moraine Conservation
  plan
• The monitoring programme developed will fit
  within the purview of existing ORM planning
  processes as established by Act and Plan, i.e.
  10-year review and Plan amendments

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Questions that need answers

• How well is the Plan being implemented?
• How good are the policies?
• Is the ORM ecology better off?
• What happens at the 10-year review in 2014?
• How can we achieve a net gain at the Plan review?
• How will we know if things are getting better or
  worse?

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Timeline
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How will MTM work?

• MTM will work with local groups to
• determine community needs
• train citizens in the use of established
• protocols for monitoring selected
• environmental features and
• establish systems for monitoring how
• municipalities make decisions on ORM

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Recording community values

• Four community workshops across ORM
• Start to build a common community map as basis
  for community-based monitoring plan
• Engage local citizens to record local knowledge
• Make local knowledge relevant for decision-making

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MTM relevant locally

• Data collected over time can be used to expose
  problems and issues that are currently not dealt
  with through the ORMCP, i.e. infrastructure
• The Plan review is the primary opportunity to
  bring these issues forward
• Monitoring process will develop local capacity to
  generate quality data that can inform
  decision-making

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What types of monitoring can YOU get involved
with?

• Water quality monitoring surface water
  (streams), well water
• Air quality monitoring
• Forest biodiversity
• Many others!

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Monitoring Activities of Community Volunteers
Measuring forest biodiversity, surveying ground
cover, shrub and sapling growth, forest health,
lichens and soil in Forest Biodiversity Plots

• Volunteers collecting benthic macroinvertebrates
  (water bugs) biological indicators of water
  quality

Volunteers conducting a survey of lichen on
trees biological indicators of air quality
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Monitoring Activities of Community Volunteers

• NatureWatch is a suite of community-based
  "citizen science" monitoring programs through
  which Environment Canada collects data on
  indicators of ecosystem health.

Monitoring frogs tells us something about the
health of wetland areas ice and plants climate
change worms diversity, soil ecology
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Why Monitor on the Moraine?

• Care for the Moraine
• Data to track change
• Raise a red-flag
• Inform stewardship projects
• Link to local-decision making

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Get Involved!

• Let us know what youre concerned about
• Based on your input, we will create a community
  strategic plan which will outline
• appropriate indicators and protocols
• training and support
• where the data will go, how you can use it
• Help to fill the gaps in knowledge about the
  moraine, and link into other citizens who are
  striving to do the same

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Communities of Practice Informatics Communities
can share their information, data, stories and
issues via the Web using a Common Map
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Communities of Practice Informatics Application
Tools Map Posting

• Features drawn over a map image
• with attributed form based tabular numerical
  and text data
• and/or attributed documents
  etc.
• can be committed to the COMAP database and shared
  with other databases.

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Communities of Practice Informatics Application
Tools Layer Selection

• layer selected ready for map searching

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Communities of Practice Informatics Application
Tools Layer Search

• Layer Area Search with generated list linked
  documents
• Possible sub-search, within map area search
• Key Word, Date Range, Author/Organization etc.
• Ranked indexed document text phrase (Google)
• Temporal search for future occurrence, with
  email notification

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Communities of Practice Informatics in
application
data uploaded
media
at a cursor selected
location
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Communities of Practice Informatics with
reporting
Map searching and dynamically graphed results
with mapping and local imaging
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Conservation Priority Areas (CPAs) OverviewKate
Potter ORMSPA
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CPAs

• Conservation Priority Areas (CPAs) analysis
  originally done by the Ministry of Natural
  Resources (MNR)
• Analysis was done for two reasons
• Resulting from an identified need of the ORM
  Foundation to become more strategic in monetary
  allocations
• The Ministry could use the Moraine as a model
  which could be applied to all of southern Ontario
  later on

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Objectives

• Looked at
• Forests
• Wetlands
• Prairie / Savannah
• Provincially Significant Areas
• Location of Public Lands
• Location of urban areas

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At the end of the day

• The Conservation Priority Areas (CPAs) map has
  been used to identify areas where large scale
  projects, such as this one, should occur to help
  create a strategic benefit for the entire
  Moraine, as opposed to one specific local area.

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Community Mapping Exercise
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Next steps

• Moraine-wide workshops
• King Township - September 20
• Whitchurch-Stouffville - September 22
• Alnwick-Halimand - September 26
• Clarington- September 28
• Field Days - October
• 2nd round consultations - February 06
• Training workshops - Spring 06
• Implementation

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Next steps

• Initiate development of Common Map for
  information management, data sharing and
  reporting - timing dependent on funding
• First Monitoring Advisory Committee meeting -
  October
• Draft monitoring framework - December

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Next steps - What can YOU do?

• Read the Oak Ridges Moraine Conservation Plan
  (http//www.mah.gov.on.ca/userfiles/HTML/nts_1_684
  6_1.html)
• Visit our websites for more material
• Monitoring the Moraine (www.MonitoringTheMoraine.c
  a)
• STORM (www.stormco.org)
• CEW (www.CitizensEnvironmentWatch.org)
• COMAP (www.comap.ca)
• Contact us if you have any advice or questions
• Sign up for our newsletter, field day, training
  sessions
• Help us spread the word about the project!

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Many Thanks

• Sourcebooks
• many people and organizations for providing or
• offering in-kind support

Centre for Land and Water Stewardship, University
of Guelph