The County of Peterborough occupies 421,490 ha in the northeast corner of the study area. It is a largely rural municipality, with only one large urban centre - the City of Peterborough. The villages of Lakefield and Fraserville have been identified in the County of Peterborough Official Plan (1994) as "growth nodes" to which future development will also be directed. Few areas outside of these designated settlement areas are experiencing any development pressure at present and consequently few of the County's Greenlands areas are under threat. Indeed, Greenland areas subject to policy (Table 13) are not even mapped in the current County Official Plan (1994).
The northern half of the County of Peterborough is situated on the Canadian Shield. Most of the land is wooded (Crown land), dotted with many small wetlands, the vast majority of which are unevaluated (Level 4 protection).
South of the Shield, a number of provincially significant wetlands (Level 1) are associated with the creeks that drain into Rice Lake and Sturgeon Lake, as well as ESAs identified by the Otonabee Region Conservation Authority. The Oak Ridges Moraine extends into the extreme southwest corner of the County (Figure 14).
Table 13: Levels of Greenlands Protection for the County of Peterborough
Figure 14: County of Peterborough
