The Wastewater Systems Effluent Regulations (WSER), developed under the Fisheries Act, came into force in 2012 to manage wastewater releases by systems that collect an average daily influent volume of 100 cubic metres or more. The WSER also does not apply to any wastewater system located in the Northwest Territories, Nunavut and north of the 54th parallel in the provinces of Quebec and Newfoundland and Labrador. The WSER set national baseline effluent quality standards that are achievable through secondary wastewater treatment. The WSER require owners or operators of wastewater systems with combined sewers to submit an annual report on the total volume and the number of days wastewater is discharged per month via combined sewer overflow (CSO) points as a result of precipitation. The map below shows the volume of effluent (in cubic metres) discharged in a year from all CSO points situated within the collection area of a wastewater system. For the most part, the volumes provided to ECCC are estimates. Please note, a value of “999999999” in the dataset indicates that the volume data is unavailable and it does not mean that a volume of 999,999,999 m3 was released within the collection area of a wastewater system. The map is available in both ESRI REST (to use with ARC GIS) and WMS (open source) formats. For more information about the individual reporting wastewater systems, datasets are available in either CSV or XLS formats. Data from Quebec As of 2018, no combined sewer overflow volumes from Quebec municipalities are available since an equivalency agreement is now in effect. More information on the wastewater sector including the regulations, agreements, contacts and resource documents is available at: https://www.canada.ca/wastewater

The impact of climatic variability on the environment is of great importance to the agricultural sector in Canada. Monitoring the impacts on water supplies, soil degradation and agricultural production is essential to the preparedness of the region in dealing with possible drought and other agroclimate risks. Derived normal climate data represent 30-year averages (1961-1990, 1971-2000, 1981-2010, 1991-2020) of climate conditions observed at a particular location. The derived normal climate data represents 30-year averages or “normals” for precipitation, temperature, growing degree days, crop heat units, frost, and dry spells. These normal trends are key to understanding agroclimate risks in Canada. These normal can be used as a baseline to compare against current conditions, and are particularly useful for monitoring drought risk.

Each pixel value corresponds to the best quality maximum NDVI recorded within that pixel over the week specified. Poor quality pixel observations are removed from this product. Observations whose quality is degraded by snow cover, shadow, cloud, aerosols, and/or low sensor zenith angles are removed (and are assigned a value of “missing data”). In addition, negative Max-NDVI values, occurring where R reflectance > NIR reflectance, are considered non-vegetated and assigned a value of 0. This results in a Max-NDVI product that should (mostly) contain vegetation-covered pixels. Max-NDVI values are considered high quality and span a biomass gradient ranging from 0 (no/low biomass) to 1 (high biomass).

Frost Day Count (-2 °C) is defined as the count of the number of days in a calendar month where the minimum daily temperature for the climate day was at or below -2 °C. These values are calculated across Canada in 10x10 km cells.

This series includes maps of projected change in mean precipitation based on CMIP5 multi-model ensemble results for RCP2.6, RCP4.5 and RCP8.5, expressed as a percentage (%) of mean precipitation in the reference period. The median projected change across the ensemble of CMIP5 climate models is shown. Maps are provided for three time periods: 2016-2035, 2046-2065 and 2081-2100. For more maps on projected change, please visit the Canadian Climate Data and Scenarios (CCDS) site: https://climate-scenarios.canada.ca/?page=download-cmip5.

The Fisheries and Oceans Canada ecosystem surveys are conducted annually and are a source of integrated ecosystem monitoring data. These survey data are the primary data source for monitoring trends in species distribution, abundance, and biological condition within the region, and also provide data to the Atlantic Zonal Monitoring Program (AZMP) for monitoring hydrographic conditions, along with zooplankton and phytoplankton. The surveys follow a stratified random sampling design, and include sampling using a bottom otter trawl, CTD rosette and vertical plankton tows. Data from the bottom trawl catch are used to monitor the distribution and abundance of fish and invertebrates throughout the Scotian Shelf, Bay of Fundy and Georges Bank. Cite this data as: Clark, D., Emberley, J. Data of MARITIMES RESEARCH VESSEL SURVEYS. Published January 2021. Population Ecology Division, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, Dartmouth, N.S. https://open.canada.ca/data/en/dataset/8ddcaeea-b806-4958-a79f-ba9ab645f53b

This collection is a legacy product that is no longer maintained. It may not meet current government standards. Users of Atlas of Canada National Scale Data 1:15,000,000 (release of May 2017) should plan to make the transition towards the new CanVec product. The Atlas of Canada National Scale Data 1:15,000,000 Series consists of boundary, coast and coastal islands, place name, railway, river, road, road ferry and waterbody data sets that were compiled to be used for atlas small scale (1:15,000,000 to 1:30,000,000) mapping. These data sets have been integrated so that their relative positions are cartographically correct. Any data outside of Canada included in the data sets is strictly to complete the context of the data.

The Canadian Seasonal to Inter-annual Prediction System (CanSIPS) carries out physics calculations to arrive at probabilistic predictions of atmospheric elements from the beginning of a month out to up to 12 months into the future, resulting in seasonal forecasts. Atmospheric elements include temperature, precipitation, wind speed and direction and others. This product contains raw numerical results of these calculations. Geographical coverage is global. Data is available on a grid at a horizontal resolution of 2.5 degrees and 1 degree and for a few selected vertical levels. In addition, forecast probabilities for below, near, and above normal temperature and precipitation are available at both resolutions. Predictions and corresponding hindcast are made available monthly.

The National Human Settlement Layer (NHSL) is a collection of thematic datasets that describe the physical, social and economic characteristics of urban centres and rural/remote communities across Canada, and their vulnerability to natural hazards of concern. Detailed information on land use, buildings, people and capital assets are provided at the Census Dissemination Area administrative level for more than 454,000 settled areas across Canada. The Physical Exposure Layer includes a delineation of human settlement areas and related functional land use classes across Canada, and provides detailed information on construction type, occupancy and design level of more than 9.1 million buildings; population dynamics at different times of day for 35.1 million people, and; capital asset valuation of buildings and contents totaling more than 8.3 trillion CAD$. The Social Fabric Layer utilizes Census demographic data to evaluate broad spatial patterns of vulnerability, and neighbourhood-level capacities to withstand and recover from disaster events based on intrinsic characteristics of housing, family structure, individual autonomy and financial agency. Although developed to support quantitative risk assessments and implementation of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction at local and regional scales in Canada, the NHSL is also suitable for use in other integrated landscape modeling applications, including climate change adaptation and sustainable land use planning.

Data represents surface water occurrence frequency (percentage), which describes the frequency for each grid appeared as water in the 30 years time period of 1991 to 2020. The data covers Canada’s entire landmass including all transboundary watersheds, and is at 30-meter spatial resolution. The surface water occurrence frequency is derived using the surface water model of Wang et al. (2023) from all-available monthly water data observed by the Landsat satellites (Pekel et al., 2016). Here, permanent waters are represented by 100%, and permanent land surfaces by 0%, of water occurrence for a 30-meter by 30-meter grid. References: Pekel, J.-F., A. Cottam, N. Gorelick, A.S. Belward, 2016, High-resolution mapping of global surface water and its long-term changes. Nature, 540, 418-422. Wang, S., J. Li, and H. A. J. Russell, 2023, Methods for Estimating Surface Water Storage Changes and Their Evaluations. Journal of Hydrometeorology, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1175/JHM-D-22-0098.1.