Depicts priority area for work under the Regional Assessment of Offshore Wind Development in Newfoundland and Labrador. The Committee for the Regional Assessment of Offshore Wind Development in Newfoundland and Labrador (Committee) is responsible for providing information, knowledge and analysis regarding future offshore wind development (OSW) to inform and improve future planning, licencing and impact assessment processes. The Committee’s mandate is set out in the Agreement to Conduct the Regional Assessment of Offshore Wind Development in Newfoundland and Labrador (Agreement), and includes assessing potential environmental, health, social and economic effects of future OSW. The Agreement includes a broad Study Area. In November 2023, the Committee determined OSW interest in the foreseeable future is more likely within a portion of the Study Area set out in the Agreement. The Committee defined this portion of the Study Area as the assessment's Focus Area. The Committee continues to conduct the Regional Assessment (i.e., present information on existing conditions and consider potential impacts of OSW) within the Focus Area. The Committee's decision to define the Focus Area and supporting rationale is available here: https://iaac-aeic.gc.ca/050/evaluations/document/153431 The Agreement to conduct the Regional Assessment is available here: https://iaac-aeic.gc.ca/050/documents/p84343/147037E.pdf

To support the implementation of the Impact Assessment Act, Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) received funding over  five years (2018-23) for cumulative effects research to be conducted by three of NRCan’s science sectors – the Canada Centre for Mapping and Earth Observation within the Strategic Policy and Innovation Sector, the Canadian Forest Service, and the Geological Survey of Canada within the Lands and Minerals Sector – to conduct key earth observation, forest, and geoscience research. The overarching goal of this research is to inform regional assessment and related impact assessment processes, with a central focus on making the science and knowledge generated open and accessible to the public via the Open Science and Data Platform . Projects from all three sectors generated authoritative data on the status and trends of ecosystem parameters, as well as provided unique science and technical analysis, synthesis and advice on topics related to the cumulative effects of natural resource development. This Story Map synthesizes the cumulative effects science generated over the past five years. Through the Story Map platform, we hope to illustrate the national scale of this research program and the diversity of locations in Canada within which research has been conducted.