A review of the history of the nomenclature of the Medina Formation and of the previous studies of its members, particularly those studies dealing with the source of the Whirlpool sandstone. This is an attempt to show the direction of origin of the detrital materials of the Whirlpool sandstone by a study of the lateral variation of its grain size along the Niagara Escarpment. It is illustrated with maps and with photographs taken by the writer. / Thesis / Master of Science (MSc)

No abstract Provided. / Thesis / Bachelor of Arts (BA)

No abstract Provided / Thesis / Bachelor of Arts (BA)

The stability of the Niagara Escarpment is of critical importance to residents of Hamilton, Ontario as it bisects and divides the lower downtown core from upper residential and commercial areas. The frequency of large rockfalls and debris slides from the exposed escarpment face has resulted in reoccurring road closures that connect these two areas and has prompted the city to seek information on the processes affecting escarpment erosion and slope stability. The research reported here examines the relationship between tree and plant growth on bedrock stability by investigating relationships between species abundance and slope profile, and the potential movement of tree roots growing in rock fractures. The contributing factors of tree growth to physical weathering processes on highly fractured bedrock remain largely unknown; however, plants are suggested to play a key role in weathering processes in the critical zone. Bedrock structure and lithology influence the establishment of vegetation, and vegetation in turn exploits bedrock joints, fractures, and bedding planes, exacerbating physical and biomechanical weathering processes. In this study, vegetation characteristics observed on different parts of the escarpment face were documented and categorized into three distinct biophysical zones: upper and intermediary plateau, bedrock face, and sloping talus. Tree growth, with the potential to enhance bedrock disaggregation through the transfer of tree bole movement to roots exploiting bedrock fractures, was particularly prevalent on areas of sloping talus. To document the potential for bedrock disaggregation through tree bole movement, triaxial accelerometers were mounted on the boles of three different tree species growing along the escarpment in Hamilton. Sampled trees varied in geographic location to allow identification of the relationship between tree bole movement, wind speed, and dominant wind direction. Both deciduous and coniferous species were monitored to determine the impacts of canopy architecture on tree sway in response to wind. Monitoring took place over several days in the months of March, May, September, and November. Recorded tree bole movement (tilt) varied between deciduous and coniferous tree species; wind speed was strongly correlated to tilt of the coniferous tree, and wind direction was strongly correlated to tilt of the deciduous trees. Overall tree bole movement was strongly influenced by diurnal cycles of air movement and was greatest in the hours around mid-day. The outcomes of this research will form an integral component of an erosion-risk assessment study conducted, in part, for the City of Hamilton and will facilitate the design and development of vegetation management strategies for the Niagara Escarpment that may reduce erosion processes and potential damages to impacted citizens and businesses. / Thesis / Master of Science (MSc) / This research examines the impact of vegetation growth on erosion processes on the Niagara Escarpment in Hamilton, Ontario. The slope of the escarpment face exerts an important control on vegetation growth which in turn affects slope stability. Documentation of the dominant vegetation species at two research sites allows the identification of three distinct vegetation zones on the upper plateau, bedrock face, and sloping talus. The movement of tree trunks in response to air movement was also measured for several days in the months of March, May, October and November. Results show that the movement of two monitored deciduous trees was most strongly correlated to wind direction, while the movement of a coniferous tree was strongly correlated to changes in wind speed. All monitored trees were strongly influenced by daily cycles of air movement which were greatest around noon. This research identifies factors that influence both vegetation growth and slope stability on the Niagara Escarpment and may be used to develop effective erosion protection and mitigation strategies.

A field and textural investigation of the Medina Formation has been made. The thesis includes a brief analysis of the microscopic sedimentological properties of the sandy facies, a detailed study of the paleocurrent indicators, and a study of the distribution of the more typical sedimentary structures. Analytical laboratory data, primary sedimentary structures, and outcrop data have been used to reconstruct the paleoenvironmental setting of the Lower Silurian rocks exposed along the Niagara Escarpment from Hamilton (Ontario) to Fulton (New York). They indicate a complex of sub-environments within the broad model of a delta, with the direction of current movement being from the South-East in the eastern part of the area under study and from South-West and North-East in the western part. The determination of these two paleocurrent systems forms a major contribution of this work. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

The Niagara Escarpment is one of Southern Ontario’s most important landscapes. Due to the nature of the landform and its location, the Escarpment is subject to various development pressures including urban expansion, mineral resource extraction, agricultural practices and recreation. In 1985, Canada’s first large scale environmentally based land use plan was put in place to ensure that only development that is compatible with the Escarpment occurred within the Niagara Escarpment Plan (NEP). The southern extent of the NEP is of particular interest in this study, since a portion of the Plan is located within the rapidly expanding Greater Toronto Area (GTA). The Plan area located in the Regional Municipalities of Hamilton and Halton represent both urban and rural geographical areas respectively, and are both experiencing development pressures and subsequent changes in land cover. Monitoring initiatives on the NEP have been established, but have done little to identify consistent techniques for monitoring land cover on the Niagara Escarpment. Land cover information is an important part of planning and environmental monitoring initiatives. Remote sensing has the potential to provide frequent and accurate land cover information over various spatial scales. The goal of this research was to examine land cover change in the Regional Municipalities of Hamilton and Halton portions of the NEP. This was achieved through the creation of land cover maps for each region using Landsat 5 Thematic Mapper (TM) remotely sensed data. These maps aided in determining the qualitative and quantitative changes that had occurred in the Plan area over a 20 year time period from 1986 to 2006. Change was also examined based on the NEP’s land use designations, to determine if the Plan policy has been effective in protecting the Escarpment. To obtain land cover maps, five different supervised classification methods were explored: Minimum Distance, Mahalanobis Distance, Maximum Likelihood, Object-oriented and Support Vector Machine. Seven land cover classes were mapped (forest, water, recreation, bare agricultural fields, vegetated agricultural fields, urban and mineral resource extraction areas) at a regional scale. SVM proved most successful at mapping land cover on the Escarpment, providing classification maps with an average accuracy of 86.7%. Land cover change analysis showed promising results with an increase in the forested class and only slight increases to the urban and mineral resource extraction classes. Negatively, there was a decrease in agricultural land overall. An examination of land cover change based on the NEP land use designations showed little change, other than change that is regulated under Plan policies, proving the success of the NEP for protecting vital Escarpment lands insofar as this can be revealed through remote sensing. Land cover should be monitored in the NEP consistently over time to ensure changes in the Plan area are compatible with the Niagara Escarpment. Remote sensing is a tool that can provide this information to the Niagara Escarpment Commission (NEC) in a timely, comprehensive and cost-effective way. The information gained from remotely sensed data can aid in environmental monitoring and policy planning into the future.

The Niagara Escarpment is one of Southern Ontario’s most important landscapes. Due to the nature of the landform and its location, the Escarpment is subject to various development pressures including urban expansion, mineral resource extraction, agricultural practices and recreation. In 1985, Canada’s first large scale environmentally based land use plan was put in place to ensure that only development that is compatible with the Escarpment occurred within the Niagara Escarpment Plan (NEP). The southern extent of the NEP is of particular interest in this study, since a portion of the Plan is located within the rapidly expanding Greater Toronto Area (GTA). The Plan area located in the Regional Municipalities of Hamilton and Halton represent both urban and rural geographical areas respectively, and are both experiencing development pressures and subsequent changes in land cover. Monitoring initiatives on the NEP have been established, but have done little to identify consistent techniques for monitoring land cover on the Niagara Escarpment. Land cover information is an important part of planning and environmental monitoring initiatives. Remote sensing has the potential to provide frequent and accurate land cover information over various spatial scales. The goal of this research was to examine land cover change in the Regional Municipalities of Hamilton and Halton portions of the NEP. This was achieved through the creation of land cover maps for each region using Landsat 5 Thematic Mapper (TM) remotely sensed data. These maps aided in determining the qualitative and quantitative changes that had occurred in the Plan area over a 20 year time period from 1986 to 2006. Change was also examined based on the NEP’s land use designations, to determine if the Plan policy has been effective in protecting the Escarpment. To obtain land cover maps, five different supervised classification methods were explored: Minimum Distance, Mahalanobis Distance, Maximum Likelihood, Object-oriented and Support Vector Machine. Seven land cover classes were mapped (forest, water, recreation, bare agricultural fields, vegetated agricultural fields, urban and mineral resource extraction areas) at a regional scale. SVM proved most successful at mapping land cover on the Escarpment, providing classification maps with an average accuracy of 86.7%. Land cover change analysis showed promising results with an increase in the forested class and only slight increases to the urban and mineral resource extraction classes. Negatively, there was a decrease in agricultural land overall. An examination of land cover change based on the NEP land use designations showed little change, other than change that is regulated under Plan policies, proving the success of the NEP for protecting vital Escarpment lands insofar as this can be revealed through remote sensing. Land cover should be monitored in the NEP consistently over time to ensure changes in the Plan area are compatible with the Niagara Escarpment. Remote sensing is a tool that can provide this information to the Niagara Escarpment Commission (NEC) in a timely, comprehensive and cost-effective way. The information gained from remotely sensed data can aid in environmental monitoring and policy planning into the future.

As urban areas continue to expand into rural areas the world is experiencing a loss of productive agricultural land and diminishing natural habitats and associated ecosystems. The space where urban meets rural is known as the rural-urban fringe and what happens in these areas ultimately determines urban development patterns. Despite being such an important area, the rural-urban fringe is poorly understood and is often described as a “blurry” space – blurry in land patterns because it is where multiple uses collide and in how individuals interact in this space (since actors with often diverse opinions on how land should be used coexist there). Furthermore, there is no single body of scholarly literature that explains why and how decisions get made in rural-urban fringe areas. This thesis contributes to filling this gap in literature by helping to (i) understand and explain decision-making processes at the rural-urban fringe; (ii) create an analytical framework for understanding decision-making dynamics at the rural-urban fringe within two UNESCO Biosphere Reserves: the Cape Winelands Biosphere Reserve, South Africa and the Niagara Escarpment Biosphere Reserve, Canada; and (iii) construct a theory of decision-making for better outcomes at the rural-urban fringe. The analytical framework is divided into two parts with components drawn from problem-solving (including governance and management) and critical (critical political economy and resilience) theories. The premise is that each part contributes to a holistic understanding that they cannot accomplish on their own. The analytical framework is used as the analytical platform for consideration of the research data and is the basis on which the thesis’ theoretical contribution is built. Specifically, each case study is first examined within the context of existing governance and management processes. This reveals the character of key issues and dynamics and the resulting policy responses. The cases are then located within the broader analytical contexts of critical political economy and resilience. This reveals the historical and structural dynamics often overlooked or neglected in problem-solving approaches. The thesis reveals that in both case studies, government policy notwithstanding, decision-making within the rural-urban fringe is primarily determined by neoliberal ideologies of economic development and ‘return on investment’. What emerges from the application of the analytical framework to the two case studies is a theory of decision-making for better outcomes at the rural-urban fringe wherein "better" means a process for achieving outcomes in line with the stated goals of policies and plans, generally framed by the idea of sustainable development. The theory asserts that effective decision-making for environmentally sustainable and socially equitable outcomes at the rural-urban fringe requires six conditions to be in place: (1) sufficient economic resources; (2) adequate knowledge; (3) forgiving time scale; (4) capable state; (5) robust legal structure; (6) favorable global context. All six are important though at this stage it cannot be said with absolute certainty whether better-for-all decisions may emerge in the absence of one or more of these conditions. This theory makes a meaningful contribution to the scholarship on the rural-urban fringe and advances knowledge by articulating a new integrated approach to better decision-making that addresses the explanatory weaknesses identified by this thesis for each of the five bodies of literature considered.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--York University, 2005. Graduate Programme in Environmental Studies. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 242-265). Also available on the Internet. MODE OF ACCESS via web browser by entering the following URL: http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&res_dat=xri:pqdiss&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:dissertation&rft_dat=xri:pqdiss:NR19834

<p> The Paleozoic bedrock surface of southern Ontario is dissected by an interconnected system of buried bedrock valleys that are infilled with thick successions of glacial, interglacial and fluvial sediments. These valleys can be several kilometers wide, reach depths of up to 250m and the coarse-grained units are known to host significant local and regional groundwater aquifers.</p> <p> Two buried bedrock valleys located near the Niagara Escarpment in the Region of Halton were under investigation in the fall of 1999 for their potential to host additional municipal groundwater aquifers to supply drinking water to the towns of Milton and Georgetown. Detailed logging of sediment recovered from eleven continuously-cored boreholes, drilled within the Georgetown and Milton bedrock valleys, forms the basis for this study. Four distinct facies types were identified within the borehole cores including sand, gravel, fine-grained sediment and diamict (sand-rich, mud-rich and clast-rich). These four facies types were used to subdivide the cores into six stratigraphic units based on textural characteristics and stratigraphic position. These six units form a stacked succession of aquifers and aquitards within the valley infill with two stratigraphic units being identified as potential municipal aquifers.</p> <p> The Georgetown buried bedrock valley contains narrow bedrock channel interpreted to have been fluvially incised, lying within a broader flat-bottom valley likely formed by glacial scouring of the bedrock. It is feasible that regional bedrock jointing created a zone of weakness that was later exploited by a drainage network. The valley infill sediments record the approach of the Laurentide Ice Sheet into southern Ontario during the Early to Mid-Wisconsin, and the subsequent overriding of the area during the Late Wisconsin period.</p> / Thesis / Master of Science (MSc)