As part of the Pan-Canadian approach to transforming Species at Risk conservation in Canada, a total of 11 Priority Places were affirmed by federal, provincial, and territorial governments in December 2018. One additional priority place was affirmed in 2024. The places selected have significant biodiversity, concentrations of species at risk, and opportunities to advance conservation efforts. In each Priority Place, the federal and provincial or territorial governments are working with Indigenous Peoples, partners, and stakeholders to develop conservation action implementation plans. Using a defined planning approach (such as the Open Standards for the Practice of Conservation), these implementation plans identify key actions to address the greatest threats to species. Conservation implementation plans provide the foundation for collaborative action on the ground. The federal government, in collaboration with the provinces and territories, has agreed to the implementation of the Pan-Canadian Approach to Transforming Species at Risk Conservation in Canada. This new approach shifts from a single-species approach to conservation to one that focuses on multiple species and ecosystems. This enables conservation partners to work together to achieve better outcomes for Species at Risk. These 12 Priority Places are complemented by a suite of Community-Nominated Priority Places (CNPP), identified through an open call for applications. To learn more about the Priority Places initiative and the work undertaken by our partners to recover Species at Risk within these Priority Places, please visit our interactive website https://environmental-maps.canada.ca/CWS_Storylines/index-ca-en.html#/en/priority_places-lieux_prioritaires

A Priority Place is an area of high biodiversity value that is seen as a distinct place with a common ecological theme by the people who live and work there. As part of the Pan-Canadian approach to transforming species at risk conservation in Canada, a total of 11 Priority Places were affirmed by federal, provincial, and territorial governments in December 2018. One additional priority place was affirmed in 2024. The places selected have significant biodiversity, concentrations of species at risk, and opportunities to advance conservation efforts. In each Priority Place, the federal and provincial or territorial governments are working with Indigenous Peoples, partners, and stakeholders to develop conservation implementation plans. This dataset captures a small sample of the projects that are underway in these Priority Places. Over time, it will be expanded to include more projects. Some projects span various areas of a Priority Place but are reflected in this dataset as a single center point. This dataset is not to be used for legal purposes.

The water level data comes from the groundwater monitoring network of Quebec (Canadian province). Each well in the observation network is equipped with a hydrostatic pressure transducer and a temperature sensor connected to a data logger. A second pressure transducer located above the water surface allows for adjusting the water level according to atmospheric pressure variations. The time series refers to the level below which the soil is saturated with water at the site and at the time indicated. The water level is expressed in meters above sea level (MASL). The dataset consists of a general description of the observation site including; the identifier, the name, the location, the elevation and a series of numerical values designating the water levels at a defined date and time of measurement.

The water level data comes from the groundwater monitoring network of Prince Edward Island (Canadian province). Each well in the observation network is equipped with a hydrostatic pressure transducer and a temperature sensor connected to a data logger. A second pressure transducer located above the water surface allows for adjusting the water level according to atmospheric pressure variations. The time series refers to the level below which the soil is saturated with water at the site and at the time indicated. The water level is expressed in meters above sea level (MASL). The dataset consists of a general description of the observation site including; the identifier, the name, the location, the elevation and a series of numerical values designating the water levels at a defined date and time of measurement.

A Priority Place is an area of high biodiversity value that is seen as a distinct place with a common ecological theme by the people who live and work there. As part of the Pan-Canadian approach to transforming Species at Risk conservation in Canada, a total of 11 Priority Places were affirmed by federal, provincial, and territorial governments. One additional priority place was affirmed in 2024. The places selected have significant biodiversity, concentrations of species at risk, and opportunities to advance conservation efforts. In each Priority Place, the federal and provincial or territorial governments are working with Indigenous Peoples, partners, and stakeholders to develop conservation implementation plans. This dataset displays the geographic area covered by each of the 12 Priority Places using the best available information from the Canadian Wildlife Service (CWS). Boundary information for each Priority Place was provided by its respective CWS regional office. The federal government, in collaboration with the provinces and territories, has agreed to the implementation of the Pan-Canadian Approach to Transforming Species at Risk Conservation in Canada. This new approach shifts from a single-species approach to conservation to one that focuses on multiple species and ecosystems. This enables conservation partners to work together to achieve better outcomes for species at risk. These 12 Priority Places are complemented by a suite of Community-Nominated Priority Places (CNPP), identified through an open call for applications.

The water level data comes from the Provincial Groundwater Monitoring Network (PGMN) of Ontario. Each well in the observation network is equipped with a hydrostatic pressure transducer and a temperature sensor connected to a data logger. A second pressure transducer located above the water surface allows for adjusting the water level according to atmospheric pressure variations. The time series refers to the level below which the soil is saturated with water at the site and at the time indicated. The water level is expressed in meters above sea level (MASL). Groundwater levels are recorded hourly. The dataset consists of a general description of the observation site including; the identifier, the name, the location, the elevation, and a series of numerical values designating the water levels at a defined date and time of measurement.

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.

This is a point layer of the names and locations of the actively used commercial shipping anchorages in British Columbia. These point locations were manually compiled from available port guides and documents. The objective of this dataset is to provide a consolidated file containing all active commercial shipping anchorage locations as there has been a lack of consistency between different sources due to variations in names and locations in different datasets and historical changes to anchorage locations.

This dataset is part of Environment and Climate Change Canada’s Shoreline Classification and Pre-Spill database. Shoreline classification data has been developed for use by the Environmental Emergencies Program of Environment and Climate Change Canada for environmental protection purposes. Marine and freshwater shorelines are classified according to the character (substrate and form) of the upper intertidal (foreshore) or upper swash zone (Sergy, 2008). This is the area where oil from a spill usually becomes stranded and where treatment or cleanup activities take place. The basic parameter that defines the shoreline type is the material that is present in the intertidal zone. The presence or absence of sediments is a key factor in determining whether oil is stranded on the surface of a substrate or can penetrate and/or be buried. This dataset contains thousands of linear shoreline segments ranging in length from 200 m and 2 km long. The entities represent the location of the segments and their geomorphological description. There exist further fields in the attribute table for this dataset. We are currently working on standardizing our shoreline segmentation datasets and the updated data will soon be uploaded to the catalog. Sergy, G. (2008). The Shoreline Classification Scheme for SCAT and Oil Spill Response in Canada. Proceedings of the 31stArctic and Marine Oil Spill Program Technical Seminar.Environment Canada, Ottawa, ON, Pp. 811-819.

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.