PURPOSE:The focus of this research is on changes in the distribution of killer whales in the Canadian Arctic, which is within the field of marine biogeography and marine megafauna. Our research details change in killer whale presence and ties it to changes in sea ice coverage. These are novel results, presenting trends in the arrival and departure dates of killer whales into the eastern Canadian Arctic for the first time. We go on to discuss the impacts of these changes on other aspects of Arctic ecosystems and how increasing in killer whale presence might affect other species and the management of those species in Canada. Killer whales are a widespread species of interest, especially in the Canadian Arctic as their presence is tied to multiple aspects of a region rapidly changing from the effects of climate change. DESCRIPTION:This study examines 20 years of killer whale (Orcinus orca) sightings in the eastern Canadian Arctic, drawing from a comprehensive sighting database spanning 1850-2023. Despite inherent biases favoring data collection near communities and coastal areas, spatiotemporal analyses reveal significant shifts in killer whale distribution linked to changing sea ice conditions. We developed a clustering metric representing the mean distance to the five nearest sightings and results show that killer whales are progressively moving away from historically high-use areas and that sighting locations are becoming more dispersed over time. A significant year × sea ice interaction indicates observations occur earlier during their arrival period at lower sea ice concentrations over time, suggesting that declining sea iceconcentration contributes to earlier arrival. Conversely, for departure periods, killer whales are observed farther south later in the year, likely linked to earlier freeze-up at higher latitudes, and are overall observed later into the year over time. This trend has led to a near doubling of their average presence from 26 days in 2002 to 48 days in 2023 (27 July to 13 September) reflecting an extended open-water season. These findings underscore the prolonged seasonal use of Arctic regions by killer whales, driven by diminishing sea ice and expanding openwater habitat. Such shifts highlight potential implications for Arctic marine ecosystems as killer whales increasingly overlap with endemic species.

This data is intended to identify Canadian Alternate Exchange Areas described in https://tc.canada.ca/en/marine-transportation/marine-safety/list-canada-s-designated-alternate-ballast-water-exchange-area-fresh-waters-tp-13617e-2021. The data is not intended for navigation purposes.According to Canada’s Ballast Water Regulations, if your vessel enters waters under Canadian jurisdiction from somewhere other than the U.S. waters within the Great Lakes Basin, and it cannot conduct a ballast water exchange in the areas set out in paragraphs 14(1)(a) and (b) of the regulations, then it will have to conduct a ballast water exchange in one of the areas listed below:-Gulf of St. Lawrence-Atlantic Canada-Western Canada-Canadian Eastern Arctic-Canadian Western Arctic: If you bring your vessel to a Canadian port, offshore terminal or anchorage area in the Western Arctic ballast water must be exchanged in an area as far away from shore as possible, where the water is more than 100 meters deep.Legal Constraints: Users should be aware that the polygons depicting ballast water exchange areas are intended for illustration only and should not be used for navigational or legal purposes.

The Eastern Arctic dataset comes from the Petroleum and Environmental Management Tool (PEMT). The online tool was decommissioned in 2019 and the data was transferred to Open Data in order to preserve it.The PEMT was originally developed in 2009 to help guide development in the Canadian Arctic by Indian and Northern Affairs Canada (INAC). The online tool mapped the sensitivities of a variety of Arctic features, ranging from whales to traditional harvesting, across the Arctic. The tool was intended to aid government, oil and gas companies, Aboriginal groups, resource managers and public stakeholders in better understanding the geographic distribution of areas which are sensitive for environmental and socio-economic reasons. The study area is located east of Baffin Island, Nunavut and encompasses marine habitat in Baffin Bay and Davis Strait. The boundaries of the study area are based on NOGB leasing grids applied in the Eastern Arctic, under which exploration and production licenses may be issued. Although portions of the study area hold high oil and gas potential and several small oil fields and substantial reserves of gas have been found since the 1960s in the north Baffin region, exploration for oil and gas has been limited to seismic operations and geological field work.DISCLAIMER: Please refer to the PEMT Disclaimer document or the Resource Constraints - Use Limitation in the Additional Information section below.Note: This is one of the 3 (three) datasets included in the PEMT application which includes the Beaufort Sea and Mackenzie Delta and High Arctic datasets.

In 2018, Fisheries and Oceans Canada initiated the Multidisciplinary Arctic Program (MAP) – Last Ice, the first ecosystem study of the poorly characterized region of Tuvaijuittuq, where multiyear ice still resides in the Arctic Ocean. The program MAP-Last Ice takes a coordinated approach to integrate the physical, biochemical, and ecological components of the sea ice-ocean connected ecosystem and its response to climate and ocean forcings. This program provides baseline ecological knowledge for Tuvaijuittuq and, in particular, for its unique multiyear ice ecosystem. The database provides baseline data on fatty acid composition and stable isotopes signatures of sea ice communities in multi- and first-year ice in Tuvaijuittuq. The data were collected during the 2018 spring field campaign of the MAP-Last Ice Program, offshore of Canadian Forces Station (CFS) Alert, in the Lincoln Sea.

In 2009, Fisheries and Oceans Canada published the Policy on Managing the Impacts of Fishing on Sensitive Benthic Areas. To support the implementation of this policy, a Canadian Science Advisory Secretariat (CSAS) process was initiated to: assess the distribution of fishing effort in Canada’s Atlantic and Eastern Arctic waters from 2005-2014, evaluate the overlap between fishing effort and Significant Benthic Areas (SiBAs), and identify areas of potential conservation concern. Although Research Document 2018/15 (Koen-Alonso et al. 2018), detailing this work, has not been updated since publication, the methodology outlined within it is still used to generate updated fishing effort layers as new data becomes available. This record illustrates cumulative fishing effort in Canada’s Atlantic and Eastern Arctic waters from 2005-2023, and is based on commercial logbook and vessel monitoring system (VMS) data. Fishing effort has been standardized into percentiles, whereby the top 20th percentile of intensity (cell values ≥20) represent cells containing the most intense fishing activities.

PURPOSE:Ringed seals (Pusa hispida) rely on sea ice as habitat throughout their life history and inhabit a broad latitudinal range with diverse sea-ice conditions. Anthropogenic climate warming is triggering poleward species redistributions, highlighting the importance of understanding how species distributions and abundance vary along latitudinal gradients. Using ringed seals as a model species, the purpose was to estimate density via aerial surveys along a latitudinal gradient in the eastern Canadian Arctic to investigate latitudinal trends in the ringed seals response to regional variation in sea-ice conditions. DESCRIPTION:Ringed seals (Pusa hispida) rely on sea ice as habitat throughout their life history and inhabit a broad latitudinal range with diverse sea-ice conditions, making them a model species to study patterns in density along a spatial-environmental gradient. We estimated the density of ringed seals from systematic aerial surveys along a latitudinal gradient in the eastern Canadian Arctic to investigate latitudinal trends in the ringed seals response to regional variation in sea-ice conditions. Ringed seals exhibited similar densities at lower and intermediate latitudes, while higher latitudes displayed an order of magnitude lower ringed seal density. This shift is concurrent with the transition in ice conditions from predominantly first-year ice at lower latitudes to primarily multiyear ice at higher latitudes. These findings indicate that the variation in icescapes across the ringed seal’s vast range influences their density. The shift in sea-ice conditions may also have consequences for biological productivity that supports their diet. Our results highlight a likely non-uniform response of ringed seals to ongoing sea-ice recession across the Arctic.

The High Arctic dataset comes from the Petroleum and Environmental Management Tool (PEMT). The online tool was decommissioned in 2019 and the data was transferred to Open Data in order to preserve it.The PEMT was originally developed in 2009 to help guide development in the Canadian Arctic by Indian and Northern Affairs Canada (INAC). The online tool mapped the sensitivities of a variety of Arctic features, ranging from whales to traditional harvesting, across the Arctic. The tool was intended to aid government, oil and gas companies, Aboriginal groups, resource managers and public stakeholders in better understanding the geographic distribution of areas which are sensitive for environmental and socio-economic reasons. The study area is located in the High Arctic Archipelago and contains both marine and terrestrial components. The boundaries of the study area are based on the NOGB leasing grids applied in the High Arctic, under which exploration, significant discovery and production licenses may be issued. The Sverdrup Basin (and Lancaster Sound) has the highest known oil and gas potential of the sedimentary basins of the Arctic Islands (Nunavut Planning Commission 2000) and it is expected that there is oil and gas potential on Melville Island and Bathurst Island (Sivummut Economic Development Strategy Group 2003). To date, no gas has been produced, and 321,470 m³ of oil has been produced from the Bent Horn oil field (Morrell et al. 1995). DISCLAIMER: Please refer to the PEMT Disclaimer document or the Resource Constraints - Use Limitation in the Additional Information section below.Note: This is one of the 3 (three) datasets included in the PEMT application which includes the Beaufort Sea and Mackenzie Delta and Eastern Arctic datasets.

This layer represents the Harp seal (Pagophilus groenlandicus) distribution. During the summer, the Harp seal is in Arctic and it migrates south of its distribution range during the fall. It migrates back to the Arctic after the moulting period which occurs in April and May.Reference:DFO. 2020. 2019 Status of Northwest Atlantic Harp Seals, Pagophilus groenlandicus. DFO Can. Sci. Advis. Sec. Sci. Advis. Rep. 2020/020.

"Vegetation Zones of Canada: a Biogeoclimatic Perspective" maps Canadian geography in relation to gradients of regional climate, as expressed by potential vegetation on zonal sites. Compared to previous similar national-scale products, "Vegetation Zones of Canada" benefits from the work of provincial and territorial ecological classification programs over the last 30+ years, incorporating this regional knowledge of ecologically significant climatic gradients into a harmonized national map. This new map, reflecting vegetation and soils adapted to climates prior to approximately 1960, can serve as a broad-scale (approximately 1:5 M to 1:10 M) geospatial reference for monitoring and modeling effects of climate changes on Canadian ecosystems. "Vegetation Zones of Canada: a Biogeoclimatic Perspective" employs a two-level hierarchical legend. Level 1 vegetation zones reflect the global-scale latitudinal gradient of annual net radiation, as well as the effects of high elevation and west to east climatic and biogeographic variation across Canada. Within the level 1 vegetation zones, level 2 zones distinguish finer scale variation in zonal vegetation, especially in response to elevational and arctic climatic gradients, climate-related floristics and physiognomic diversity in the Great Plains, and maritime climatic influences on the east and west coasts. Thirty-three level 2 vegetation zones are recognized: High Arctic Sparse Tundra Mid-Arctic Dwarf Shrub Tundra Low Arctic Shrub Tundra Subarctic Alpine Tundra Western Boreal Alpine Tundra Cordilleran Alpine Tundra Pacific Alpine Tundra Eastern Alpine Tundra Subarctic Woodland-Tundra Northern Boreal Woodland Northwestern Boreal Forest West-Central Boreal Forest Eastern Boreal Forest Atlantic Maritime Heathland Pacific Maritime Rainforest Pacific Dry Forest Pacific Montane Forest Cordilleran Subboreal Forest Cordilleran Montane Forest Cordilleran Rainforest Cordilleran Dry Forest Eastern Temperate Mixed Forest Eastern Temperate Deciduous Forest Acadian Temperate Forest Rocky Mountains Foothills Parkland Great Plains Parkland Intermontane Shrub-Steppe Rocky Mountains Foothills Fescue Grassland Great Plains Fescue Grassland Great Plains Mixedgrass Grassland Central Tallgrass Grassland Cypress Hills GlaciersPlease cite this dataset as: Baldwin, K.; Allen, L.; Basquill, S.; Chapman, K.; Downing, D.; Flynn, N.; MacKenzie, W.; Major, M.; Meades, W.; Meidinger, D.; Morneau, C.; Saucier, J-P.; Thorpe, J.; Uhlig, P. 2019. Vegetation Zones of Canada: a Biogeoclimatic Perspective. [Map] Scale 1:5,000,000. Natural Resources Canada, Canadian Forest Service. Great Lake Forestry Center, Sault Ste. Marie, ON, Canada.

This dataset contains the data reported in Wesley R Ogloff, Randi A Anderson, David J Yurkowski, Cassandra D Debets, W Gary Anderson, Steven H Ferguson, Spatiotemporal variation of ringed seal blubber cortisol levels in the Canadian Arctic, Journal of Mammalogy, 2022;, gyac047, https://doi.org/10.1093/jmammal/gyac047Cite this data as:Wesley R Ogloff, Randi A Anderson, David J Yurkowski, Cassandra D Debets, W Gary Anderson, Steven H Ferguson. 2022 Spatiotemporal variation of ringed seal blubber cortisol levels in the Canadian Arctic. Arctic and Aquatic Research Division, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, Winnipeg, MB. https://open.canada.ca/data/en/dataset/e1c6b350-0159-11ed-8212-1860247f53e3