The Census of Agriculture is disseminated by Statistics Canada's standard geographic units (boundaries). Since these census units do not reflect or correspond with biophysical landscape units (such as ecological regions, soil landscapes or drainage areas), Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada in collaboration with Statistics Canada's Agriculture Division, have developed a process for interpolating (reallocating or proportioning) Census of Agriculture information from census polygon-based units to biophysical polygon-based units. In the “Interpolated census of agriculture”, suppression confidentiality procedures were applied by Statistics Canada to the custom tabulations to prevent the possibility of associating statistical data with any specific identifiable agricultural operation or individual. Confidentiality flags are denoted where "-1" appears in data cell. This indicates information has been suppressed by Statistics Canada to protect confidentiality. Null values/cells simply indicate no data is reported.

Last Spring Frost (0 °C) is defined as the average day, during the first half of the year, of the last occurrence of a minimum temperature at or below 0 °C. These values are calculated across Canada in 10x10 km cells.

Water level and discharge data are available from Water Survey of Canada’s Hydrometric Network. The Water Survey of Canada (WSC) is the national authority responsible for the collection, interpretation and dissemination of standardized water resource data and information in Canada. In partnership with the provinces, territories and other agencies, WSC operates over 2500 active hydrometric gauges across the country, maintains an archive of historical information for over 7600 stations and provides access to near real-time (water level and stream flow) provisional data at over 1700 locations in Canada.

A Conservation Unit (CU) is a group of wild Pacific salmon sufficiently isolated from other groups that, if extirpated, is very unlikely to recolonize naturally within an acceptable timeframe, such as a human lifetime or a specified number of salmon generations. Holtby and Ciruna (2007) provided a framework for aggregating the five species of salmon (genus Oncorhynchus) found on Canada’s Pacific coast into species-specific CUs based on three primary characteristics: ecotypology, life history and genetics. The first stage in the description of the Conservation Units is based solely on ecology. The ecotypologies used in this framework include a combined characterization of both freshwater and near-shore marine environments, and is termed “joint adaptive zone”. The second stage of the description involves the use of life history, molecular genetics, and further ecological characterizations to group and partition the first stage units into the final Conservation Units. The result is CUs that are described through the joint application of all three axes. It is important to note that CUs are distinct from other aggregates of Pacific salmon, such as designatable units (DUs) under the Species at Risk Act or management units (MUs). CU Counting Sites: Salmon spawner enumeration data in the Pacific Region is stored and managed in the New Salmon Escapement Database (NuSEDS). The term “escapement” is used to refer to the group of mature salmon that have ‘escaped’ from various sources of exploitation, and returned to freshwater to spawn and reproduce. This data is assigned to a “Counting Site”, which may be a complete watercourse with a marine terminus, a tributary to a larger watercourse, or a defined reach within a watercourse that may or may not encompass the entire population but represents an index of the abundance of that population. CU Status: CUs form the basic unit for assessment under Canada’s Policy for the Conservation of Wild Salmon Policy (WSP) (DFO 2005). The biological status of a CU is evaluated using a number of metrics (Holt et al. 2009; Holt 2009), which indicate a WSP status zone: Red (poor status), Amber (marginal status), or Green (healthy status). A final step then incorporates all metric and status-related information into a final integrated status for each CU, along with expert commentary to support the final status determination (e.g., DFO 2012; DFO 2016). This information is used as inputs to fisheries management processes to help prioritize assessment activities and management actions. Note: CU boundaries were reviewed in 2020-2021 and have been updated from the BC Freshwater Atlas 1:50,000 scale to the BC Freshwater Atlas 1:20,000 scale. The CU boundaries were last updated in March 2023. Please be aware that CUs may be reviewed and are subject to change without notice. Please refer to Conservation Unit Review Requests-Form and Summary for a list of CU review requests that are ongoing or have been finalized.

The Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) is computed similarly to the SPI. The main difference is that SPI assesses precipitation variance, while SPEI also considers demand from evapotranspiration which is subtracted from any precipitation accumulation prior to assessment. Unlike the SPI, the SPEI captures the main impact of increased temperatures on water demand.

Temperature is a key factor affecting the physiological development of field crops as well as crop yield and agricultural product quality achieved during the growing season. Crop responses to the temperature are characterized by three important cardinal temperature indices; the cardinal minimum temperature, maximum cardinal temperature, and optimum temperature for field crop production at which the plant growth and development can start, stop, and proceed at the maximum rate respectively. Agriculture is an important primary production sector in Canada. Agricultural production, profitability, sustainability and food security depend on many agrometeorological factors. Extreme weather events in Canada, such as drought, floods, heat waves, frosts and high intensity storms, have the ability to significantly impact field crop production. Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) and Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) have together developed a suite of extreme agrometeorological indices based on four main categories of weather factors: temperature, precipitation, heat, and wind. The extreme weather indices are intended as short-term prediction tools and generated using ECCC’s medium range forecasts to create a weekly index product on a daily basis.

The’ Qu'Appelle Valley Lakes system – Topography and Imagery’ series consists of topographic and imagery data for lakes within the Qu'Appelle River Valley in central Saskatchewan. This data was collected in the fall of 2008 and consists of contour lines, shorelines, spot heights, tile index, and imagery

Tree swallow (Tachycineta bicolor) nest boxes are installed in oil sands area and in reference locations to monitor contaminant levels and impacts on tree swallow nestlings. The exposure to tree swallow nestlings to air-borne oil sands-related contaminants such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) is assessed using passive air samplers. Measures of avian health are examined in relation to location of sampling and contaminants measured.

The Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada’s (AAFC) Watersheds Project level series supplies a number of watershed and watershed related datasets for the Prairie Provinces. The levels are greater or smaller assemblages of hydrometric areas, or the components defining them. The Project is organized by hydrometric gauging stations which are sourced from Environment Canada, the United States, and Canadian provinces. Additional stations were generated to address structural issues, like river confluences or lake inlets. Collectively, they are referred to as the gauging stations, or simply, the stations. The drainage area that each station monitors, between itself and one or more of its upstream neighbours, is called an ‘incremental gross drainage area’. The incremental gross drainage areas are collected into larger or smaller groupings based on size or defined interest to generate the various ‘levels ’of the series. They include: Basins of varying size: 1. Major drainage systems (3): Arctic Ocean, Hudson Bay and Gulf of Mexico; 2. Major basins (23): associated with river or lake reaches; 3. Project sub-basins (47): created specifically for the project; 4. Sub-basins (51): based on specific Environment Canada hydrometric gauging station locations; 5. Sub-sub-basins (311): based on specific Environment Canada hydrometric gauging station locations); Incremental drainage areas: 6. Incremental gross drainage areas: one per gauging station. The incremental gross drainage areas are further subdivided into portions that either contribute or do not contribute to drainage to an average runoff event. The portions that do contribute are called ‘effective drainage’ areas, while those that don’t are called ‘non-contributing’. These generate the following levels: 7. Incremental effective drainage areas; and 8. Incremental non-contributing areas. Total drainage areas: 9. Total gross drainage areas; 10. Total effective drainage areas; and 11. Total non-contributing areas; And when combined for the entire project, yields the: 12. Effective drainage area. The series also includes the components: 13. The gauging stations; 14. The collection of boundaries (lines) of the gross incremental drainage areas as well as the boundaries that separate contributing from non-contributing areas for an average runoff event; and 15. A network of downstream-directed lines that connect the gauging stations. All linework is derived from large scale topographic data. One additional non-spatial dataset, a table of tallied values by gauging station, is provided: 16. The Project Gauging Station Table. The Project area, designed for the Prairie Provinces, covers all of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, and those portions of British Columbia, Northwest Territories, Nunavut, Ontario, and the United States that are required to complete the trans-border sections of the watersheds. Since 1975 the AAFC Watersheds Project has systematically collected and refined watershed boundaries for the Prairies. The result is the authoritative source for gross and effective drainage areas in the Prairie Provinces. The initial 1:50,000 analog delineations were moved to their digital form in 1994. Since then, the delineations have increased in accuracy and extent, and the series levels have increased to 16 in number.

In 2015, a magnitude 4.7 earthquake occurred 60 km beneath Sidney, BC. This scenario visualizes the effects of that event if it had a magnitude of 7.1.