The spatial representation for a Natural Resource Area. An NR AREA is an amalgamation of all NR Regions within the supplied boundaries and acts as an administrative area to these regions as established by the Ministry. This dataset supersedes WHSE_ADMIN_BOUNDARIES.NRO_ADM_AREAS_SP

Watershed boundary delineated for Canada-BC hydrometric stations. Currently, watersheds were delineated using 1:50,000 scale boundaries in 1996, and many watersheds encompass entire drainages, instead of just the upstream watersheds. Note - Not yet available, but we are in the process of generating BC hydrometric station upstream watersheds using updated base data, using the following method: Within BC, watershed boundaries are based on the 1:20,000-scale Freshwater Atlas fundamental watersheds, and trimmed using the BC TRIM DEM used to approximate the height-of-land at the station locations. Outside of BC, but within Canada, watershed boundaries were approximated using Canada CDED DEM data for delineation (no "stream burning" was used) and some manual editing of boundaries was done to approximately match hydrology data after the fact. Within U.S.A., the USGS Watershed Boundary Dataset was used (at the best scale available for each drainage) to delineate the watershed boundary, with the watershed trimmed using the USGS National Elevation Dataset to approximate the height-of-land when necessary.

Defines areas protected from harvesting activities by Order-in-Council as per part 13 of the Forest Act.

Environmental Monitoring Stations (EMS) spatial points coverage for the Province by LOCATION TYPES. The following spatial layers reference this as a data source: 1. Environmental Monitoring - All Stations 2. Environmental Monitoring Stations - Air Monitoring (Ambient Air Site) 3. Environmental Monitoring Stations - Air Monitoring (Air Permit) 4. Environmental Monitoring Stations - Water Sites (Water Monitoring) 5. Environmental Monitoring Stations - Water Sites (Water Permits) 6. Environmental Monitoring Stations - Water Sites (Well) 7. Environmental Monitoring Stations - Water Sites (Observation Well) 8. Environmental Monitoring Stations - Water Sites (Spring)

The Forest Inventory Zone(s) (FIZ) were developed to provide a broadly based ecological classification of the forest land in British Columbia. FIZ closely follow the early biogeoclimatic zones developed by Dr. Krajina. The province of British Columbia is split into 12 FIZ zones.

Biogeoclimatic Ecosystem Classification (BEC) zone boundaries with percent protected, number of overlapping protected areas and other attributes added as a result of geoprocessing in the Protected Area System Overview (PASO) application. Protected area and park representation by BEC zone provides a zonal ecosystem context for natural resource planning processes such as; management plans, land use zoning, environmental risk assessment, landscape analysis, habitat supply, and management of high priority species. For important warnings about using this data for spatial analysis see the Data Quality section of the metadata

The Province is divided into nine administrative regions, having a total of 225 wildlife management units (WMU) for the purpose of efficient game management.

Wildfire perimeters for all fire seasons before the current year. Supplied through various sources. Not to be used for legal purposes. These perimeters may be updated periodically during the year. On April 1 of each year the previous year's fire perimeters are merged into this dataset

Digital Elevation Model (DEM) for British Columbia produced by GeoBC. This data is the TRIM DEM converted to the Canadian Digital Elevation Data (CDED)format. The data consists of an ordered array of ground or reflective surface elevations, recorded in metres, at regularly spaced intervals. The spacing of the grid points is .75 arc seconds north/south. The data was converted into 1:50,000 grids for distribution. The scale of this modified data is 1:250,000 which was captured from the original source data which was at a scale of 1:20,000. The CDED format specification are available at ftp://ftp.geogratis.gc.ca/pub/nrcan_rncan/elevation/cdem_mnec/doc/CDEM_product_specs.pdf

The Road Structures on the highway that are maintained by the Ministry. Highway structures include bridges, culverts (greater than or equal to 3m diameter), retaining walls (perpendicular height greater than or equal to 2m), sign bridges, tunnels/snowsheds. Information is recorded in the Bridge Management Information System (BMIS)