Fetch is a proxy for wind-wave action and exposure. Estimates of fetch over a total of 39,938 km of the BC coastline were calculated at 50 m intervals, yielding 799,220 near shore fetch points. Fetch was calculated for five regions in Pacific Canada: Haida Gwaii (HG), North and Central Coast (NCC), Queen Charlotte and Johnstone Straits (QCS), Salish Sea (SoG), and West Coast Vancouver Island (WCVI). For all regions, a bearing interval of 5 degrees was used to generate fetch lines for each point along the shoreline, resulting in 72 fetch lines per point. A maximum fetch distance of 200 km was used to ensure the barrier effect of Haida Gwaii was captured. Supplementary information provided includes the fetch geometry calculator script and user guide (Gregr 2014) and a report on the fetch processing objectives, process, and results (Gregr 2015).

As part of a scientific assessment of critical habitat for boreal woodland caribou (Environment Canada 2011, see full reference in accompanying documentation), Environment Canada's Landscape Science and Technology Division was tasked with providing detailed anthropogenic disturbance mapping, across known caribou ranges, as of 2015. This data comprises a 5-year update to the mapping of 2008-2010 disturbances, and allows researchers to better understand the attributes that have a known effect on caribou population persistence. The original disturbance mapping was based on 30-metre resolution Landsat-5 imagery from 2008 -2010. The mapping process used in 2010 was repeated using 2015 Landsat imagery to create a nationally consistent, reliable and repeatable geospatial dataset that followed a common methodology. The methods developed were focused on mapping disturbances at a specific point of time, and were not designed to identify the age of disturbances, which can be of particular interest for disturbances that can be considered non-permanent, for example cutblocks. The resultant datasets were used for a caribou resource selection function (habitat modeling) and to assess overall disturbance levels on each caribou ranges. Anthropogenic disturbances within 51 caribou ranges across Canada were mapped. The ranges were defined by individual provinces and territories across Canada. Disturbances were remapped across these ranges using 2015 Landsat-8 satellite imagery to provide the most up-to-date data possible. As with the 2010 mapping project, anthropogenic disturbance was defined as any human-caused disturbance to the natural landscape that could be visually identified from Landsat imagery with 30-metre multi-band imagery at a viewing scale of 1:50,000. A minimum mapping unit MMU of 2 ha (approximately 22 contiguous 30-metre pixels) was selected. Each disturbance feature type was represented in the database by a line or polygon depending on their geometric description. Polygonal disturbances included: cutblocks, mines, reservoirs, built-up areas, well sites, agriculture, oil and gas facilities, as well as unknown features. Linear disturbances included: roads, railways, powerlines, seismic exploration lines, pipelines, dams, air strips, as well as unknown features. For each type of anthropogenic disturbance, a clear description was established (see Appendix 7.2 of the science assessment) to maintain consistency in identifying the various disturbances in the imagery by the different interpreters. Features were only digitized if they were visible in the Landsat imagery at the prescribed viewing scale. A 2nd interpreter quality-control phase was carried out to ensure high quality, complete and consistent data collection. For this 2015 update an additional, separate higher-resolution database was created by repeating the process using 15-metre panchromatic imagery. For the 30-metre database only, the line and poly data were buffered by a 500-metre radius, representing their extended zone of impact upon boreal caribou herds. Additionally, forest fire polygons were merged into the anthropogenic footprint in order to create an overall disturbance footprint. These buffered datasets were used in the calculation of range disturbance levels and for integrated risk assessment analysis.

As part of the International Polar Year (IPY) 2007'08 and 2008'09 activities, and related objectives of the Commission for the Geological Map of the World (CGMW), nations of the circumpolar Arctic have co-operated to produce a new bedrock geology map and related digital map database at a scale of 1:5 000 000. The map, released in north polar stereographic projection using the World Geodetic System (WGS) 84 datum, includes complete geological and physiographic coverage of all onshore and offshore bedrock areas north of latitude 60° north.

The Department of National Defence has designated Firing Practice and Exercise Areas off the coasts of Canada. Activities in these areas may include bombing practice from aircraft, air-to-air, air-to-sea or ground firing, and anti-aircraft firing, etc. In Atlantic Canada, the Nova Scotia Area includes sea area employments for sub-surface operations and firing exercises (FIREX). The Gulf of St. Lawrence Area, excluding the French territorial waters of Saint-Pierre et Miquelon, includes sea area employments for sub-surface operations and underwater demolition training. For full details, see the Notices to Mariners, Section F, National Defence Military Notices, available online: https://www.notmar.gc.ca/publications/annual-annuel/section-f/f35-en.pdf. Legal Constraints: Users should be aware that the polygons depicting firing practice and exercise areas are intended for illustration only and should not be used for navigational or legal purposes.

A revised qualitative assessment of the hydrocarbon resource potential is presented for the Hudson Bay sedimentary basin that underlies Hudson Bay and adjacent onshore areas of Ontario, Manitoba, and Nunavut. The Hudson Basin is a large intracratonic sedimentary basin thatpreserves dominantly Ordovician to Devonian aged limestone and evaporite strata. Maximum preserved sediment thickness is about 2.5 km. Source rock is the petroleum system element that has the lowest chance of success; the potential source rock is thin, may be discontinuous, and the thin sedimentarycover may not have been sufficient to achieve the temperatures required to generate and expel oil from a source rock over much of the basin. The highest potential is in the center of the basin, where the hydrocarbon potential is considered amp;lt;'Mediumamp;gt;'. Hydrocarbon potential decreasestowards the edges of the basin due to fewer plays being present, and thinner strata reduce the chance of oil generation and expulsion. Quantitative hydrocarbon assessment considers seven plays. Input parameters for field size and field density (per unit area) are based on analog Michigan, Williston,and Illinois intracratonic sedimentary basins that are about the same age and that had similar depositional settings to Hudson Basin. Basin-wide play and local prospect chances of success were assigned based on local geological conditions in Hudson Bay. Each of the seven plays were analyzed in Roseand Associates PlayRA software, which performs a Monte Carlo simulation using the local chance of success matrix and field size and prospect numbers estimated from analog basins. Hudson sedimentary basin has a mean estimate of 67.3 million recoverable barrels of oil equivalent and a 10% chance ofhaving 202.2 or more million barrels of recoverable oil equivalent. The mean chance for the largest expected pool is about 15 million recoverable barrels of oil equivalent (MMBOE), and there is only a 10% chance of there being a field larger than 23.2 MMBOE recoverable. The small expected fieldsizes are based on the large analog data set from Michigan, Williston and Illinois basins, and are due to the geological conditions that create the traps. The small size of the largest expected field, the low chance of exploration success, and the small overall resource make it unlikely that there are any economically recoverable hydrocarbons in the Hudson Basin in the foreseeable future. The Southampton Island area of interest includes 93 087 km2 of nearshore waters around Southampton Island and Chesterfield Inlet in the Kivalliq Region of Nunavut. Of the total resource estimated for Hudson Bay, 14 million barrels are apportioned to the Southampton Island Area of Interest.

GIS compilation of data used to perform the stacked cumulative chance of success (resource potential map) in Open file 9163. Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) has been tasked, under the Marine Conservation Targets (MCT) initiative announced in Budget 2016, with evaluating the petroleum resource potential for areas identified for possible protection as part of the Government of Canada's commitment to conserve 10% of its marine areas by 2020. As part of this initiative, NRCan's Geological Survey of Canada (GSC) conducted a broad regional study of the petroleum potential over the majority of the Magdalen Basin, which is the principal geological basin in the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence. The GSC resource assessment is visually represented by a qualitative petroleum potential map. Disclaimer: A simplified colored version of the map is displayed on the Web Mapping Service (WMS). The correct version is available for download through the Federal Geospatial Platform (FGP) and GEOSCAN.

An eelgrass distribution map was classified from remotely sensed imagery in Richibucto Harbour, New Brunswick. Derived from a Quickbird satellite image collected on August 28th, 2007 at as close to low-tide as possible. Quickbird's ground resolution is 2.4 m. Classification was objected-oriented using Definiens software. Accuracy was 81.5%. Data used for accuracy and training was collected along transects using a differential GPS positioned towfish holding sidescan sonar, and a video camera that was later transcribed as XY points to describe eel-grass presence.

In 2021, the Canada Coast Guard (CCG) and Fisheries and Oceans Canada updated its administrative boundaries following the creation a new Arctic region. There are now 4 administrative regions in CCG (Western, Arctic, Central and Atlantic). DFO and Coast Guard Arctic Regions developed these regions in partnership with the people they serve; this important decision will lead to stronger programs and services to better meet the unique needs of our Arctic communities. DFO and CCG operations and research cover Canada's land and waters to the international boundaries (EEZ) and are in no way limited to the boundaries drawn in the map.

Description: Data on recreational boating are needed for marine spatial planning initiatives in British Columbia (BC). Vessel traffic data are typically obtained by analyzing automatic identification system (AIS) vessel tracking data, but recreational vessels are often omitted or underrepresented in AIS data because they are not required to carry AIS tracking devices. Transport Canada’s National Aerial Surveillance Program (NASP) conducted aerial surveys to collect information on recreational vessels along several sections of the BC coast between 2018 and 2022. Recreational vessel sightings were modeled against predictor variables (e.g., distance to shore, water depth, distance to, and density of marinas) to predict the number of recreational vessels along coastal waters of BC. The files included here are: --A Geodatabase (‘Recreational_Boating_Data_Model’), which includes: (1) recreational vessel sightings data collected by NASP in BC and used in the recreational vessel traffic model (‘Recreational_Vessels_PointData_BC’); (2) aerial survey effort (or number of aerial surveys) raster dataset (‘surveyeffort’); and (3) a vector grid dataset (2.5 km resolution) containing the predicted number of recreational vessels per cell and predictor variables (‘Recreational_Boating_Model_Results_BC). --Scripts folder which includes R Markdown file with R code to run the modelling analysis (‘Recreational_Boating_Model_R_Script’) and data used to run the code. Methods: Data on recreational vessels were collected by NASP during planned aerial surveys along pre-determined routes along the BC coast from 2018 to 2022. Data on non-AIS recreational vessels were collected using video cameras onboard the aircraft, and data on AIS recreational vessels using an AIS receiver also onboard the aircraft. Recreational boating predictors explored were: water depth, distance to shore, distance to marinas, density of marinas, latitude, and longitude. Recreational vessel traffic models were fitted using Generalized Linear Models (GLM) R packages and libraries used here include: AED (Roman Lustrik, 2021) and MASS (Venables, W. N., Ripley, 2002), pscl package (Zeileis, Kleiber, and Jackman, 2008) for zeroinfl() and hurdle() function. Final model was selected based on the Akaike’s information criterion (AIC) and the Bayes’ information criterion (BIC). An R Markdown file with code use to run this analysis is included in the data package in a folder called Script. Spatial Predictive Model: The selected model, ZINB, consist of two parts: one with a binomial process that predicts the probability of encountering a recreational vessel, and a second part that predicts the number of recreational vessels via a count model. The closer to shore and to marinas, and the higher the density of marinas, the higher the predicted number of recreational vessels. The probability of encountering recreational vessels is driven by water depth and distance to shore. For more information on methodology, consult metadata pdf available with the Open Data record. References: Serra-Sogas, N. et al. 2021. Using aerial surveys to fill gaps in AIS vessel traffic data to inform threat assessments, vessel management and planning. Marine Policy 133: 104765. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpol.2021.104765 Data Sources: Recreational vessel sightings and survey effort: Data collected by NASP and analyzed by Norma Serra to extract vessel information and survey effort (more information on how this data was analyzed see SerraSogas et al, 2021). Bathymetry data for the whole BC coast and only waters within the Canadian EEZ was provided by DFO – Science (Selina Agbayani). The data layer was presented as a raster file of 100 meters resolution. Coastline dataset used to estimate distance to shore and to clip grid was provided by DFO – Science (Selina Agbayani), created by David Williams and Yuriko Hashimoto (DFO – Oceans). Marinas dataset was provided by DFO – Science (Selina Agbayani), created by Josie Iacarella (DFO – Science). This dataset includes large and medium size marinas and fishing lodges. The data can be downloaded from here: Floating Structures in the Pacific Northwest - Open Government Portal (https://open.canada.ca/data/en/dataset/049770ef-6cb3-44ee-afc8-5d77d6200a12) Uncertainties: Model results are based on recreational vessels sighted by NASP and their related predictor variables and not always might reflect real-world vessel distributions. Any biases caused by the opportunistic nature of the NASP surveys were minimized by using survey effort as an offset variable.

The joint Natural Resources Canada/Department of Fisheries and Oceans Marine Spatial Planning Program requires the highest resolution marine based bathymetric elevation data and adjacent land based topographic elevation data that are available. This digital elevation model of Canada's west coast compiles the best data available from multiple government agencies to create a regional model gridded at 10 meter spacing. The transitions between the marine and terrestrial areas are seamless creating a continuous surface of elevations for scientific research and mapping.