Abstract
Regional Niagara is the site of an intense three-way land-use conflict among urban, agricultural and natural uses. Large scale spatial and temporal land-use data were used to investigate the dynamics of land-use change in this area. A first order Markov chain was used as a stochastic model to make quantitative comparisons of the land-use changes between discrete time periods extending from 1935 to 1981.
The Markov model allowed for two main conclusions about the historic dynamics of land-use change in the Regional Municipality of Niagara.
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1.
The urbanization of agricultural land was the predominant land-use change.
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2.
A continuing ‘exchange’ of land area occurs between wooded and agricultural land-use categories that has little effect on the net amount of wooded land but which could undermine the long-term ecological value of remaining natural areas in Niagara.
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Muller, M.R., Middleton, J. A Markov model of land-use change dynamics in the Niagara Region, Ontario, Canada. Landscape Ecol 9, 151–157 (1994). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00124382
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00124382