Northern Canada Scoter Survey 2017-2019

The Canadian Wildlife Service (CWS) Northern Canada Scoter Survey used helicopters to survey breeding scoters in 5x5 km (25 km²) plots in six study areas across Northern Canada in the Northwest Territories (NT), Manitoba (MN) and Québec (QC) from 2017-2019. Populations of North American breeding scoters appeared to be in decline, albeit with a large degree of uncertainty around population size estimates and trends due to challenges related to surveying this group of sea ducks. The main goal of the survey was to address the major monitoring gap for scoters in Canada, as most traditional waterfowl surveys do not cover their breeding range or late nesting phenology. In addition to targeting three species of scoter, the survey targeted other sea duck species including scaup, mergansers and Long-tailed Ducks.

Complete bilingual metadata including detailed survey design, protocols and data dictionaries is available in downloadable files.

Note: A version of this dataset was published January 2025 (Record Name: Scoter Experimental Surveys, NT, MB, QC, 2017-2019 / Inventaires Expérimentaux de Macreuses, NT, MB, QC, 2017-2019, Identifier: 9cddead7-1dc8-4379-afc5-0275b7449bd5). This published version includes the same observation and plot data as the previous version but also includes more detailed survey conditions data, and has been formatted to the schema of QWAC-QSC (Quantifying Waterfowl Across Canada database - Base de données sur la Quantification de la Sauvagine au Canada). See the parent record for "Waterfowl Surveys in Canada" (Identifier: 0af7faf5-495c-4074-9cf6-7dc12e6bfe3f) for more information.

Simple

Date ( RI_367 )
2026-07-31
Date ( RI_366 )
2026-05-28
RI_414
  Government of Canada; Environment and Climate Change Canada
Status
completed; complété RI_593
Maintenance and update frequency
asNeeded; auBesoin RI_540
Keywords ( RI_528 )
  • waterfowl
  • bird
  • aerial survey
  • survey
  • aerial
  • waterbirds
  • shorebirds
  • helicopter
  • scoters
Government of Canada Core Subject Thesaurus Thésaurus des sujets de base du gouvernement du Canada ( RI_528 )
  • Game (Wildlife)
Environment Canada - Program Environment Canada - Program ( RI_528 )
  • 1.1.3. Migratory Birds
Canada/US States and Provinces Canada/US États et provinces ( RI_528 )
  • Northwest Territories
  • Manitoba
  • Quebec
Business Functions Fonctions de l'entreprise ( RI_528 )
  • Protect Species Well-Being
  • Assess Status of Species
Directorate Direction ( RI_528 )
  • Canadian Wildlife Service
ECCC Government Titles EN ECCC Government Titles FR ( RI_528 )
  • Environment and Climate Change Canada
ECCC Geographic Scope EN ECCC Geographic Scope FR ( Place )
  • Prairie - Manitoba (MB)
  • Territories - Northwest Territories (NT)
  • Quebec (QC)
Use limitation
Open Government Licence - Canada (http://open.canada.ca/en/open-government-licence-canada)
Access constraints
license; licence RI_606
Use constraints
license; licence RI_606
Spatial representation type
vector; vecteur RI_635
Metadata language
eng; CAN
Metadata language
fra; CAN
Character set
UTF8
Topic category
  • Biota
Begin date
2017-06-08
End date
2019-06-21
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Reference system identifier
https://epsg.io / EPSG:4326 /
Distribution format
  • GDB ( 1 )

  • KMZ ( 1 )

  • CSV ( 1 )

  • PDF ( 1 )

RI_412
  Government of Canada; Environment and Climate Change Canada
OnLine resource
View ECCC Data Mart (English) ( HTTPS )

Web Service;HTML;eng

OnLine resource
View ECCC Data Mart (French) ( HTTPS )

Web Service;HTML;fra

OnLine resource
CWS_NCSC25_AllData_ToutesLesDonnées ( WWW:DOWNLOAD-1.0-http--download )

Dataset;ZIP;eng,fra

OnLine resource
CWS_NCSC25_BMDE ( WWW:DOWNLOAD-1.0-http--download )

Dataset;CSV;eng,fra

OnLine resource
CWS_NCSC25_ProtocolDataDictionary ( WWW:DOWNLOAD-1.0-http--download )

Supporting Document;PDF;eng

OnLine resource
CWS_NCSC25_ProtocolDataDictionary ( WWW:DOWNLOAD-1.0-http--download )

Supporting Document;PDF;fra

OnLine resource
CWS_NCSC25_SurveyAreas_Plots_SecteursInventaire_Quadrats.kmz ( WWW:DOWNLOAD-1.0-http--download )

Dataset;KMZ;eng,fra

OnLine resource
CWS_NCSC25_SurveyConditions_ConditionsInventaire.csv ( WWW:DOWNLOAD-1.0-http--download )

Dataset;CSV;eng,fra

OnLine resource
CWS_NCSC25_SurveyObservations_ObservationsInventaire.csv ( WWW:DOWNLOAD-1.0-http--download )

Dataset;CSV;eng,fra

File identifier
d47c0884-d331-4c55-8b9d-a23fe0d3a965 XML
Metadata language
eng; CAN
Character set
utf8; utf8 RI_458
Parent identifier
0af7faf5-495c-4074-9cf6-7dc12e6bfe3f 0af7faf5-495c-4074-9cf6-7dc12e6bfe3f
Hierarchy level
dataset; jeuDonnées RI_622
Date stamp
2026-06-11T19:16:13.548506Z
Metadata standard name
North American Profile of ISO 19115:2003 - Geographic information - Metadata
Metadata standard version
CAN/CGSB-171.100-2009
RI_414
  Government of Canada; Environment and Climate Change Canada
 
 

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