Glossary

Glossary

• Niagara Escarpment --(from www.escarpment.org/About/faq.htm) Ontario's Niagara Escarpment is a provincially and internationally significant geological landform and one of Canada's most magnificent landforms. The Escarpment is a forested ridge travelling 725 km from Queenston, near Niagara Falls, to Tobermory, at the tip of the Bruce Peninsula. Ontario's Niagara Escarpment stretches across portions of eight counties or regions, which include 23 local municipalities.
• Land Securement -- [adapted from the Nature Conservancy of Canada's website (www.natureconservancy.ca) ] Land securement activities include acquiring and preserving land through:
  1. Land purchase: purchasing a piece of land outright from a private landowner (corporate or individual).
  2. Land donations: Receiving a donation of land from a private landowner (corporate or individual).
  3. Conservation easements: Entering into a legal agreement in which a landowner agrees to the imposition of restrictions on activities that would otherwise threaten the ecological value of the land. An easement (also known as a conservation convenant, servitude or agreement, depending on provincial legislation) allows the owner to retain ownership of the land while ensuring its protection from future development and other uses that incompatible with conservation.

• Stewardship - (from www.ontariostewardship.org )
  1. a personal commitment to care for the land
  2. to sustain or enhance the land for the enjoyment of future generations.

• Ecological Health -- (from www.wikipedia.org) Ecological health or ecological integrity or ecological damage is used to refer to symptoms of an ecosystem's ability to perform nature's services.
• Key Natural Heritage Features (KNHF) - (from Technical Paper #1) KNHF as defined in the Oak Ridges Moraine Conservation Plan are:
  1. Wetlands;
  2. Significant portions of the habitat of endangered, rare and threatened species;
  3. Fish habitat;
  4. Areas of natural and scientific interest (life science);
  5. Significant valleylands;
  6. Significant woodlands;
  7. Significant wildlife habitat; and
  8. Sand barrens, savannahs and tallgrass prairies.

• Hydrologically Sensitive Features (HSF) -- (from Technical Paper #12) HSF as defined in the Oak Ridges Moraine Conservation Plan, hydrological sensitive features include: The following are hydrologically sensitive features:
  1. Permanent and intermittent streams;
  2. Wetlands
  3. Kettle lakes; and
  4. Seepage areas and springs.

• Landform Conservation - (from Technical Paper #4) as defined in the Oak Ridges Moraine Conservation Plan, landform conservation includes Landform conservation is the protection and wise use of the land base including its form, soils and associated biophysical processes. It is an approach that encourages planning, design and construction practices which: 1)minimize disruption to natural form and related ecological processes; and 2)enhance protection of biophysical features in a natural state and keep a greater portion of a site in an open-space character.
  Although not an explicit target or objective of the ORMCP, landform conservation practices also indirectly maintain the visual character and identity of the landscape.

• Glacial Lakes - (from www.wikipedia.org) A glacial lake is a lake with origins in a melted glacier.
• Watershed - (from www.conservation-ontario.on.ca) A watershed is an area of land that is drained by a river and its tributaries into a particular body of water such as a pond, lake or ocean.
• Native Plants -- (from www.wikipedia.org) Native plants are considered native, indigenous, or endemic to a region if they originated and are naturally occurring in that region.
• Riparian -- (from www.wikipedia.org) A riparian zone is the interface between land and a flowing surface water body.
• Hardwood -- (from www.wikipedia.org)The term hardwood designates wood from broad-leaved (mostly deciduous, but not necessarily, in the case of tropical trees) or angiosperm trees. Hardwood contrasts with softwood, which comes from conifer trees.

• Conifers -- (from www.wikipedia.org)They are cone-bearing seed plants with vascular tissue; all extant conifers are woody plants, the great majority being trees with just a few being shrubs. Typical examples of conifers include cedars, douglas-firs, firs, junipers, pines, redwoods, and spruces.

• Invasive Species -- (from www.ofah.org) Invasive species are one of the greatest threats to the biodiversity of Ontario's waters, wetlands and woodlands. Originating from other regions of the world, and in the absence of their natural predators or controls, invading species can have devastating effects on native species, habitats and ecosystems.

• Hydrogeology -- (from www.wikipedia.org) Hydrogeology (hydro- meaning water, and -geology meaning the study of the Earth) is the part of hydrology that deals with the distribution and movement of groundwater in the soil and rocks of the Earth's crust, (commonly in aquifers).