The Story of PEI Part 12: 20th Century Land Use Change

Over the winter, we’ve explored the story of PEI starting with formation of its bedrock 300 million years ago, through the last ice age, the pre-settlement landscape, local wildlife, and changes brought about by European settlers and land clearing. Today’s final chapter looks at changes during the 20th century. 

Photo 1: Forests regenerating on farmland are very different from those growing on land that was never farmed.

By 1900, more than two-thirds of PEI’s land area – roughly 398,000 hectares (about 980,000 acres) – had been cleared for agriculture, settlements, and roads. Forest area was the lowest of any time before or since and the Island’s population was the highest it had ever been (more than 103,000 people). With available farmland exhausted and the Western Canadian Land Grants underway, many young men and women were leaving the Island to seek better opportunities elsewhere.

Despite high birth rates, PEI’s population had dropped by nearly 15,000 people by 1921, and it would be four decades before it returned to turn-of-the-century levels. Land that had been cleared for farming began to be abandoned, resulting in decreases in agricultural land and increases in forest area throughout this time.

The forest that reclaimed abandoned farmland was very different from that which grew there before land clearing. Rather than the late-successional, shade-loving mixed species of our pre-settlement forest, early-successional, sun-loving species – particularly White Spruce – were quick to establish. The type of trees isn’t the only difference between forests on ploughed versus unploughed sites: their very foundation had changed. 

In Photo 1, you can see the forest floor on the left is flat, whereas that on the right has hills and hollows.  The left is former farmland, the right is land that has never seen a plough. Those hills and hollows – also called cradle hollows, or pits and mounds – take centuries to form.

The hills are the remnants of fallen trees, recycled over hundred of years by fungi and other decomposers. The hollows are low spots between the fallen trees, and holes left by root masses when the trees blew over; we’ve seen a modern-day example of this thanks to Hurricane Fiona. Unploughed lands have the only true remaining forest soils left on PEI, including associated seed banks, fungi, micro-organisms, and invertebrates.  

Photo 2: 20th century changes in land use in Brookvale, PEI.

The Island’s earliest airphotos give us insight into land use in 1935, and how it has changed since then.  At that time, there were more than 12,000 individual farms in the province with an average size of about 36 hectares (90 acres); forests covered 186,000 ha (about 460,000 acres). By 2000, this had changed to just over 1,800 individual farms with an average size of about 146 hectares (roughly 360 acres), and forest area had grown to 263,000 ha (nearly 650,000 acres).  

Photo 3: 20th century changes in land use around Charlottetown, PEI.

Photos 2 and 3 show examples of 20th century land use changes in areas you may be familiar with: Brookvale and the north end of Charlottetown. At Brookvale, you can see farmland that has regenerated to forest over the decades (including what is now the Provincial Ski Park). Those lands that have remained in agriculture have seen increased field sizes, in keeping with the size of modern-day farm equipment versus that of a century ago. The north end of Charlottetown has seen land use change of a different sort, with residential and industrial uses on what was once agricultural land.

You can explore PEI aerial photos taken at various times since 1935 on the Provincial website (https://www.princeedwardisland.ca/en/feature/aerial-photo-index-map#/service/AerialPhotoIndexMap/AerialPhotoIndexMap) or via the UPEI GeoREACH Lab’s historical map viewer (https://projects.upei.ca/geolab/resources/pei-map-resources/geopei/).

I hope you’ve learned new and interesting things about the Island throughout this series; you can read all 12 chapters in this blog. As we move into spring, I’ll be sharing information about some of the interesting, edible, and medicinal plants on PEI, as well the fungi, animals, and habitats that are important parts of PEI Untamed!