In marine ecosystems, the combination of multiple, co-occurring human activities can degrade habitats, undermining the very ecosystem services on which human societies depend. To examine the combined risk to marine habitats from multiple, overlapping human activities and stressors in Atlantic Canadian waters, a cumulative habitat risk assessment was conducted across four bioregions: (1) Scotian Shelf-Bay of Fundy, (2) Northern Gulf of St. Lawrence (3) Southern Gulf of St. Lawrence and (4) Newfoundland and Labrador. This analysis combined spatial information for 20 different marine habitats and 36 human activities across five different sectors (climate change, land-based, marine, coastal, and commercial fishing) using a spatially explicit, exposure-consequence risk framework. This dataset provides the cumulative habitat risk map for Atlantic Canadian marine waters at a 1 km² resolution, as well as the habitat map used in the risk analysis. This project was funded by Fisheries and Oceans Canada through a Competitive Science Research Fund (CSRF) grant. For further information concerning specifics of the maps and methods, contact the data provider. References Arkema, K.K., Verutes, G., Bernhardt, J.R., et al. 2014. Assessing habitat risk from human activities to inform coastal and marine spatial planning: a demonstration in Belize. Environ. Res. Lett. 9(11): 114016. Cite this data as: Kelly, N.E. and Murray, C. Cumulative risk maps for marine habitats of Atlantic Canada. Published: April 2026. Coastal Ecosystems Science Division, Maritimes Region, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, Dartmouth NS.

This layer details Important Areas (IAs) relevant to important geographic features in the Pacific North Coast Integrated Management Area (PNCIMA). This data was mapped to inform the selection of marine Ecologically and Biologically Significant Areas (EBSA). Experts have indicated that these areas are relevant based upon their high ranking in one or more of three criteria (Uniqueness, Aggregation, and Fitness Consequences). The distribution of IAs within ecoregions is used in the designation of EBSAs. Canada’s Oceans Act provides the legislative framework for an integrated ecosystem approach to management in Canadian oceans, particularly in areas considered ecologically or biologically significant. DFO has developed general guidance for the identification of ecologically or biologically significant areas. The criteria for defining such areas include uniqueness, aggregation, fitness consequences, resilience, and naturalness. This science advisory process identifies proposed EBSAs in Canadian Pacific marine waters, specifically in the Strait of Georgia (SOG), along the west coast of Vancouver Island (WCVI, southern shelf ecoregion), and in the Pacific North Coast Integrated Management Area (PNCIMA, northern shelf ecoregion). Initial assessment of IA's in PNCIMA was carried out in September 2004 to March 2005 with spatial data collection coordinated by Cathryn Clarke. Subsequent efforts in WCVI and SOG were conducted in 2009, and may have used different scientific advisors, temporal extents, data, and assessment methods. WCVI and SOG IA assessment in some cases revisits data collected for PNCIMA, but should be treated as a separate effort. Other datasets in this series detail IAs for birds, cetaceans, coral and sponges, fish, invertebrates, and other vertebrates. Though data collection is considered complete, the emergence of significant new data may merit revisiting of IA's on a case by case basis.

This visualization product displays the cigarette related items abundance of marine macro-litter (> 2.5cm) per beach per year from Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) monitoring surveys related to UNEP-MARLIN data only. EMODnet Chemistry included the collection of marine litter in its 3rd phase. Since the beginning of 2018, data of beach litter have been gathered and processed in the EMODnet Chemistry Marine Litter Database (MLDB). The harmonization of all the data has been the most challenging task considering the heterogeneity of the data sources, sampling protocols and reference lists used on a European scale. Preliminary processing were necessary to harmonize all the data: - Selection of MSFD surveys only (exclusion of other monitoring, cleaning and research operations); - Exclusion of beaches without coordinates; - Selection of cigarette related items only. The list of selected items is attached to this metadata. This list was created using EU Marine Beach Litter Baselines and EU Threshold Value for Macro Litter on Coastlines from JRC (these two documents are attached to this metadata); - Selection of surveys referring to the UNEP-MARLIN list: the UNEP-MARLIN protocol differs from the other types of monitoring in that cigarette butts are surveyed in a 10m square. To avoid comparing abundances from very different protocols, the choice has been made to distinguish in two maps the cigarette related items results associated with the UNEP-MARLIN list from the others; - Normalization of survey lengths to 100m & 1 survey / year: in some case, the survey length was not exactly 100m, so in order to be able to compare the abundance of litter from different beaches a normalization is applied using this formula: Number of cigarette related items of the survey (normalized by 100 m) = Number of cigarette related items of the survey x (100 / survey length) Then, this normalized number of cigarette related items is summed to obtain the total normalized number of cigarette related items for each survey. Finally, the median abundance of cigarette related items for each beach and year is calculated from these normalized abundances of cigarette related items per survey. Sometimes the survey length was null or equal to 0. Assuming that the MSFD protocol has been applied, the length has been set at 100m in these cases. Percentiles 50, 75, 95 & 99 have been calculated taking into account cigarette related items from MSFD monitoring data (UNEP-MARLIN protocol only) for all years. More information is available in the attached documents. Warning: the absence of data on the map doesn't necessarily mean that they don't exist, but that no information has been entered in the Marine Litter Database for this area.

Map of contemporary marine fish data sources. Green squares indicate data from benthic trawl monitoring efforts, blue squares indicate data from benthic trawl surveys, while red triangles indicate data from pelagic trawl monitoring efforts. Red line indicates the CAFF boundary. STATE OF THE ARCTIC MARINE BIODIVERSITY REPORT - <a href="https://arcticbiodiversity.is/findings/marine-fishes" target="_blank">Chapter 3</a> - Page 112 - Figure 3.4.1

Seasonal time series of the major zooplankton in Franklin Bay, Canada STATE OF THE ARCTIC MARINE BIODIVERSITY REPORT - <a href="https://arcticbiodiversity.is/findings/plankton" target="_blank">Chapter 3</a> - Page 78 - Figure 3.2.9 Mesozooplankton abundance, integrated from 10 m above the seafloor to the surface (ind m-2), in Franklin Bay during the CASES 2003-04 overwintering expedition. Most of the sampling was done at the overwintering station and a few stations were close to this site in autumn 2003 and summer 2004.

The Canadian Hydrographic Service (CHS) Low Water Mark Lines provide alongshore and across-shore geomorphological and biological attributes of the low water mark shoreline. The lines are used in the CHS nautical charts to represent the level reached by sea water at low tide.

Macrofauna distribution of biomass (g wet fixed weight m-2) in the Barents Sea over three time periods: 1924-32 (Figure A), 1968-70 (Figure B) and 2003 (Figure C, constructed from original archive data, except for area south of 72° N where digitized megafaunal-data taken from Anisimova et al. (2010) was used. Adapted from Denisenko (2013). Blue boxes delineate the areas within which the zoobenthos biomass values were compared. STATE OF THE ARCTIC MARINE BIODIVERSITY REPORT - <a href="https://arcticbiodiversity.is/findings/benthos" target="_blank">Chapter 3</a> - Page 96- Figure 3.3.3

EMODnet Chemistry aims to provide access to marine chemistry datasets and derived data products concerning eutrophication, acidity and contaminants. The importance of the selected substances and other parameters relates to the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD). This aggregated dataset contains all unrestricted EMODnet Chemistry data on eutrophication and acidity, and covers the Greater North Sea and Celtic Seas. Data were aggregated and quality controlled by 'Aarhus University, Department of Bioscience, Marine Ecology Roskilde' in Denmark. ITS-90 water temperature and water body salinity variables have also been included ('as are') to complete the eutrophication and acidity data. If you use these variables for calculations, please refer to SeaDataNet for the quality flags: https://www.seadatanet.org/Products/Aggregated-datasets. Regional datasets concerning eutrophication and acidity are automatically harvested, and the resulting collections are aggregated and quality controlled using ODV Software and following a common methodology for all sea regions ( https://doi.org/10.13120/8xm0-5m67). Parameter names are based on P35 vocabulary, which relates to EMODnet Chemistry aggregated parameter names and is available at: https://vocab.nerc.ac.uk/search_nvs/P35/. When not present in original data, water body nitrate plus nitrite was calculated by summing all nitrate and nitrite parameters. The same procedure was applied for water body dissolved inorganic nitrogen (DIN), which was calculated by summing all nitrate, nitrite, and ammonium parameters. Concentrations per unit mass were converted to a unit volume using a constant density of 1.025 kg/L. The aggregated dataset can also be downloaded as an ODV collection and spreadsheet, which is composed of a metadata header followed by tab separated values. This spreadsheet can be imported to ODV Software for visualisation (more information can be found at: https://www.seadatanet.org/Software/ODV).

It has not been possible to identify available trend data for Arctic Ocean sea surface temperatures because there is not enough data to calculate reliable long-term trends for much of the Arctic marine environment (IPCC 2013, NOAA 2015). Here, sea surface temperature for July 2015 is shown from CAFF’s Land Cover Change Index. MODIS Sea Surface Temperature (SST) provided a four-kilometre spatial resolution monthly composite snapshot made from night-time measurements from the NASA Aqua Satellite. The night-time measurements are used to collect a consistent temperature measurement that is unaffected by the warming of the top layer of water by the sun. STATE OF THE ARCTIC MARINE BIODIVERSITY REPORT - <a href="https://arcticbiodiversity.is/marine" target="_blank">Chapter 2</a> - Page 25 - Figure 2.3

This product displays for Triphenyltin, median values of the last 6 available years that have been measured per matrix and are present in EMODnet regional contaminants aggregated datasets, v2022. The median values ranges are derived from the following percentiles: 0-25%, 25-75%, 75-90%, >90%. Only "good data" are used, namely data with Quality Flag=1, 2, 6, Q (SeaDataNet Quality Flag schema). For water, only surface values are used (0-15 m), for sediment and biota data at all depths are used.