What is the Bar for Terrain "Uniqueness"?

What does it mean for a landscape or landform to be "unique"? How can anything be considered unique in a world literally full of unique topography? As we all know, intuitively and from our own personal experiences, no two natural outdoor places are exactly the same. The vastness and complexity of the natural world is something of wonderment, even a source of spiritual, physical, and mental replenishment. The sacred landforms that span cultures and ancestral lineages are profound touchstones for our collective, communal sense of identity and meaning during our relatively short lives.

You do not have to look too hard for them in Canada, of all places: Just think of the bumper stickers you see of people hailing from "the Rock" of Newfoundland, or "the Island" of Vancouver Island - proudly proclaiming their allegiance to a macro-scale landform. Similarly, the great plains (Canada's breadbasket), the Badlands, the Rocky Mountains and its iconic proglacial lakes, the modest but rugged Canadian Shield, all featured and revered as the muse for visual artwork amongst Canada's most celebrated artists and musicians.

If you've been fortunate enough to do the drive along the Trans-Canada Highway from Victoria BC to St. John's, NFLD, or any portion thereof in between, you've been treated to a living meditation on the gargantuan space that we live in as infinitesimal beings...and that is just the 'tip of the iceberg'.

With such vast landscapes to choose from, how do we sort through the noise to determine what is truly "unique"? Why do we need to argue it, when every landscape and landform is indeed unique in its own way?

One of the challenges that soil and terrain scientists face in evaluating landscapes slated for industrial, commercial, public, or residential development, is to determine whether or not they are "unique", worthy of administrative protections or development restrictions. On the surface, this is a strange task - if everything is already "unique", then no one landform is "uniquely unique"...right?

Well - sort of...thankfully, we get to apply something of a subjective lens to landscapes and landforms in the evaluation of uniqueness, rather than be forced into a justification of uniqueness on purely technical, physical topographical attributes.

Nevertheless, analysis of the technical attributes allows the soil and terrain scientist to uncover the root reasons why other aspects of the landscape combine to produce unique and highly valued places in four-dimensional space and time.

With that, there are some criteria that can be applied to decide "unique" from "unremarkable" in a world full of "remarkable but not unique" landforms. If a landscape or landform is determined to be "unique", then it requires special attention and consideration when decision-makers are tasked with approving, amending, or rejecting a development application.

1. CULTURAL SIGNIFICANCE

The first bar of uniqueness is whether or not the landscape or landform within a proposed development area is culturally significant to one of the project's stakeholders. This might be an indigenous community/government (First Nations or Metis), the public at large (e.g. landowners or landowner groups), a public institution (e.g. national/provincial parks), or a private interest (think ski hills or private campgrounds).

There are too many good examples of culturally significant landscapes/landforms in Canada to list exhaustively, but a few on the top of my head would be, say, the Fjords of Gros Morne National Park (NFLD), the Sleeping Giant (Thunder Bay, ON) Lake Louise (AB), or the Stawamus Chief (BC).

This aspect of Terrain Uniqueness is typically integrated as part of assessments of 'Visual Aesthetics', 'Historical Resources Value', 'Land Use and Tenure', 'Socio-Economics', and 'Traditional Land Use Value'. In fact, it by-and-large isn't the Soil and Terrain scientist who points out landforms that have cultural significance. Instead, it is the stakeholders that tell the proponent what landscapes and landforms have cultural value, and the Soil and Terrain scientist would analyze the topographical attributes and look for analogues that support or reject the claim of uniqueness by a stakeholder.

2. ECOLOGICAL IMPORTANCE

Unique landscapes and landforms usually occupy rare dynamic equilibrium positions in the terrestrial ecosystem. These typically take the form of important nesting grounds for migratory bird species (e.g. McClelland Lake Wetland Complex, Northern AB), topographical protections from predators and access to seasonally-scant food sources (e.g. Bighorn Sheep critical habitat High Elevation Grasslands, Upper Elk Valley, BC), or critical food/water sources in an otherwise barren or harsh environment (such as an oasis in a desert).

This aspect of uniqueness is often misunderstood and (unfortunately) overshadowed at a foundational level by the disciplines of vegetation ecology, wildlife biology, and biodiversity. At an exploratory level, it makes sense that potentially rare and critical habitats are identified by specialists of these biotic disciplines. Where problems start is when the soil and terrain scientist is not afforded appropriate resources to evaluate the terrain and determine why it is that these ecologically rare and/or critical conditions occur where they do in 4-dimensional space and time.

Understanding why these landscapes occur where they do is fundamental to reclamation/rehabilitation planning and offsetting/compensation strategy. By overlooking the contributions that the soil and terrain scientist offers these conversations, much valuable time is wasted by proponents attempting to convince themselves that certain ecological functions or features can (or can't) be reclaimed in areas that the fundamentals of the 'abiotic/biotic' interface do not (or do) support. Soil and terrain scientists are generally very well-versed in advanced GIS analysis, and are specifically trained to consider both the abiotic and biotic factors of ecosystems. Evaluating the following aspects of the terrestrial ecosystem provide valuable insights into the ecological importance of a landscape or landform:

1. Depositional environments (bedrock and surficial geology).
2. Microclimate/weather conditions inherent to, and partly produced by, the landscape (e.g. anabatic, katabatic winds, wind exposure vs. sheltering, etc.).
3. Topographical constraints (solar insolation, overland flow accumulation and erosion potential).
4. Spatial trends in soil depth and edaphic properties (moisture and nutrients).
5. Chemical/physical restrictions (pH, salinity, sodicity, organic matter).
6. Belowground ecosystem indicators (soil invertebrates, fungi, microbes)

3 IRREPLACEABILITY

The landforms of Canada are old, though not by geological standards. Most of Canada was under one of two massive expanses of ice between 25,000 to 15,000 years ago (the Laurentide and Cordilleran Ice Sheets). The landforms we see today are largely the result of the scouring, erosion, and deposition that took place during and since that period of time. Some erosional and depositional environments are more common than others. Eolian deposits, for example, are among the rarest in Canada, but in the Sahara Desert, they are everywhere. Conversely, colluvial deposits (such as from landslides and debris flows), are very common in mountainous regions, but occur only in isolated locations, many along river channels, in lowland plains.

The combination of a multitude of abiotic and biotic factors all converge to express as the landscapes that occur. Differences in how and where these erosional and depositional environments originated, how they are orientated, their climates (and microclimates they produce), and the vegetation and wildlife that use them can result in unique landscapes and landforms.

Often is the case, especially with landscapes where there is much potential gravitational energy inherent (i.e., on high ground), the energy required to bring them down (by say, dynamite or heavy equipment for a mine) is much, much lower than the energy required to build them back up again (to convince yourself, hike up and down a mountain...easier and faster on the way down, isn't it?). For this reason, amongst other factors such as availability of appropriate soil resources, topographical and microclimatic changes brought on by the alteration of the terrain, many 'unique' landscapes and landforms are exceptionally difficult to replace or rehabilitate. In these instances, "offsetting" or "compensation" is required; what that looks like is highly situation dependent. This includes negotiation and compromises to be reached with affected stakeholders, including the indigenous peoples of the region and other public stakeholders responsible for the stewardship of the environment in a given jurisdiction.

4 FUTURE SIGNIFICANCE POTENTIAL

As climate change and societal change proceeds, what is/was significant or important today may be different as people emigrate/immigrate, and as the dynamic equilibrium positions of various landscapes shift. This is perhaps the most difficult and fraught aspect to consider. In order to provide context for this, the terrain needs to be assessed in the context of climate change models for insolation, precipitation, winds, and temperature in a particular location, and compare it to its current condition. As climate models continue to get more and more powerful and reliable, this is becoming possible. This work is done in 2D, 3D, and 4D GIS-based models that allow for the integration of the multitude of factors that affect the relative importance of a given landscape or landform.

At a foundational level, if a landscape is presently culturally significant, it is presumed that it will remain so for ancestral reasons. But as people move into new places, the valleys, skylines, scenery where they call home become identifiable and relied upon as local landmarks with newfound cultural touchstones. As mentioned early in this article, this is an innately human activity, connected to our evolutionary need to define where we live (our 'territory'), written into our DNA.

This is dissimilar to how we view ecological importance. If the ecological characteristics (i.e. habitat suitability) have critical importance today, and climate models predict their habitat suitability remains the same or better, then it stands to reason that they remain critically important. This is also true if their suitability declines under climate forecasts but there is no 'new' critical habitat predicted for a given region serving that particular function. Conversely, if the habitat conditions decline in the present-day critical areas, but 'new' landscapes/landforms are predicted to open up and provide those ecological functions, then there is an argument to be made that the 'future' ecologically important landscapes and landforms should be of higher priority for protection than those of present day. As I mentioned above, this is a fraught topic, full of controversy and complexity. The precautionary principle would suggest that both current and future critical habitats should be protected, but that is another discussion for a different day altogether.

WHAT IS THE BAR FOR TERRAIN UNIQUENESS?

Wait a minute - don't we already have a good idea of where the "unique" terrain is? If a landscape or landform is so important, isn't it already protected as an Environmentally Significant/Sensitive Area or National/Provincial Park? Isn't this just a redundant exercise?

It is true that most iconic landscapes and landforms in Canada that are culturally and ecologically significant are already protected. Remember though, that there is a lot of undeveloped wildlands in Canada that have rarely been visited by people, let alone studied for their ecological importance. As some of the largest industrial developments are mines, they often occur in such areas. This is why environmental baseline studies are necessary to carry out, and it is often during those studies that the ecological importance of a 'unique' landscape or landform is discovered. This is literally currently happening today - right now - in remote locations in Canada. As these areas are studied and the complexity is revealed by natural scientists, the importance of the soil and terrain is 'unearthed' (pun fully intended).

Consider also that some of these existing, known, protected areas are also very popular destinations, and there is a lot of money to be made by developing real estate and tourist destinations there. This speaks to the need to screen the terrain for uniqueness for both the developers' and the public's interest. Development near and within landscapes and landforms that are unique are often ones that attract media attention, litigation, and lengthy regulatory approval processes. A land developer is wise to either avoid those, or have an equally compelling argument why development would provide compensatory cultural and ecological benefits, not simply a mitigation of impact.

At the end of the day, it is important to look beyond the "if everything is unique, then nothing is unique" attitude towards the terrain of the natural world. It is innately human to have a relationship to the ground we walk on and bury our ancestors in, that we harvest the bounty of, the skylines we see, the wild places we need for our collective well-being and survival. I hope that this article provides you with some insights into the work of the soil and terrain scientist, and the importance of spending the time to evaluate landscapes and landforms for uniqueness in the course of development applications.

If you enjoyed this article and want to read more, please have a look through my listing on my LinkedIn page.

Thanks for reading.

Collen Middleton, RPBio (BC), P.Biol. (AB)

Soil, Terrain and Reclamation Scientist

Photo credits:

Nikita Singhal (Lake Louise)

Andy Holmes (Columbia Icefields Skywalk)

Tandem X Visuals (Saskatchewan Vista)

Wildsight (High Elevation Grassland)

Ric Matkowski (Badlands)

Ryan (Unsplash) (Sleeping Giant)