ENV - Environment and conservation (environment)Environmental resources, protection, and conservation. For example, resources describing pollution, waste storage and treatment, environmental impact assessment, environmental risk, and nature reserves. )

Ecologically and Biologically Significant Areas (EBSAs) are areas within Canada's oceans that have been identified through formal scientific assessments as having special biological or ecological significance when compared with the surrounding marine ecosystem.Failure to define an area as an EBSA does not mean that it is unimportant ecologically. All areas serve ecological functions to some extent and require sustainable management. Rather, areas identified as EBSAs should be viewed as the most important areas where, with existing knowledge, regulators and marine users should be particularly risk averse to ensure ecosystems remain healthy and productive.Why are EBSAs identified?EBSA information is used to inform marine planning, including environmental assessment and the siting of marine-based activities, by:- Informing and guiding project-specific or regional environmental assessments;- Informing and guiding industries and regulators in their planning and operations, for example: EBSAs have been acknowledged and referred to (often as "Special Areas" or "Potentially Sensitive Areas") in oil and gas related assessments;- EBSA information has been provided to proponents of submarine cable projects to be used for route planning purposes;- Informing and guiding Integrated Oceans Management (IOM) process within five Large Ocean Management Areas (LOMAs) and twelve marine bioregions;- Serving as a basis for the identification of Areas of Interest (AOIs) and of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) (individually and in the context of planning bioregional networks of MPAs).How are EBSAs identified?The process used to identify EBSAs is generally comprised of two phases. The first phase involves compiling scientific data and knowledge of a marine area's ecosystems - notably fish species, marine mammals, sea birds, marine flora, marine productivity, physical and chemical conditions and geology. "Knowledge" includes experiential knowledge of long-time uses of the areas. In some cases (e.g., in the Arctic), substantial efforts are taken to collect traditional knowledge on ecosystems and environmental conditions from community members, fish harvests, hunters and individuals whose knowledge of the study area complement often helps fill scientific data gaps.In the second phase, the available information for a marine area (e.g. a bioregion) is assessed against five nationally-established science-based criteria including:- Uniqueness: How distinct is the ecosystem of an area compared to surrounding ones?- Aggregation: Whether or not species populate or convene to the study area?- Fitness consequence: How critical the area is to the life history of the species that use it (e.g. is it a spawning or feeding ground)?- Naturalness: How pristine or disturbed by human activities is the study area?- Resilience: What is the ability of the ecosystem to bounce back if it is disturbed?Progress to date and next stepsEBSAs have been identified for large portions of Canada's Atlantic and Pacific Oceans as well as most of the Arctic oceans. EBSAs will continue to be identified in priority areas as resources become available to carry out the process. The boundaries or locations of existing EBSAs may be modified to reflect both new knowledge and changing environmental conditions.

DescriptionConservation of marine biodiversity requires understanding the joint influence of ongoing environmental change and fishing pressure. Addressing this challenge requires robust biodiversity monitoring and analyses that jointly account for potential drivers of change. Here, we ask how demersal fish biodiversity in Canadian Pacific waters has changed since 2003 and assess the degree to which these changes can be explained by environmental change and commercial fishing. Using a spatiotemporal multispecies model based on fisheries independent data, we find that species density (number of species per area) and community biomass have increased during this period. Environmental changes during this period were associated with temporal fluctuations in the biomass of species and the community as a whole. However, environmental changes were less associated with changes in species’ occurrence. Thus, the estimated increases in species density are not likely to be due to environmental change. Instead, our results are consistent with an ongoing recovery of the demersal fish community from a reduction in commercial fishing intensity from historical levels. These findings provide key insight into the drivers of biodiversity change that can inform ecosystem-based management.The layers provided represent three community metrics: 1) species density (i.e., species richness), 2) Hill-Shannon diversity, and 3) community biomass. All layers are provided at a 3 km resolution across the study domain for the period of 2003 to 2019. For each metric, we provide layers for three summary statistics: 1) the mean value in each grid cell over the temporal range, 2) the probability that the grid cell is a hotspot for that metric, and 3) the temporal coefficient of variation (i.e., standard deviation/mean) across all years.Methods:The analysis that produced these layers is presented in Thompson et al. (2022). The analysis uses data from the Groundfish Synoptic Bottom Trawl Research surveys in Queen Charlotte Sound (QCS), Hecate Strait (HS), West Coast Vancouver Island (WCVI), and West Coast Haida Gwaii (WCHG) from 2003 to 2019. Cartilaginous and bony fish species caught in DFO groundfish surveys that were present in at least 15% of all trawls over the depth range in which they were caught were included. This depth range was defined as that which included 95% of all trawls in which that species was present. The final dataset used in our analysis consisted of 57 species (Table S1 in Thompson et al. 2022).The spatiotemporal dynamics of the demersal fish community were modeled using the Hierarchical Modeling of Species Communities (HMSC) framework and package (Tikhonov et al. 2021) in R. This framework uses Bayesian inference to fit a multivariate hierarchical generalized mixed model. We modeled community dynamics using a hurdle model, which consists of two sub models: a presence-absence model and a biomass model that is conditional on presence. Our list of environmental covariates included bottom depth, bathymetric position index (BPI), mean summer tidal speed, substrate muddiness, substrate rockiness, whether the trawl was inside or outside of the ecosystem-based trawling footprint, and survey region (QCS & HS vs. WCVI & WCHG)), mean summer near-bottom temperature deviation, mean summer near-bottom dissolved oxygen deviation, mean summer cross-shore and along-shore current velocities near the seafloor, mean summer depth-integrated primary production, and local-scale commercial fishing effort.Layers are provided for three community metrics. All metrics should be interpreted as the value that would be expected in the catch from an average tow in the Groundfish Synoptic Bottom Trawl Research Surveys taken in a given 3 km grid cell. Species density (sometimes called species richness) should be interpreted as the number of the 57 species that would be caught in a trawl. Hill-Shannon diversity is a measure of diversity that gives greater weight to communities where biomass is spread equally across species. Community biomass is the total biomass across all 57 species that would be expected to be caught per square km in an average tow. Data Sources:Research data was provided by Pacific Science's Groundfish Data Unit for research surveys from the GFBio database between 2003 and 2019 that occurred in four regions: Queen Charlotte Sound, Hecate Strait, West Coast Haida Gwaii, and West Coast Vancouver Island. Our analysis excludes species that are rarely caught in the research trawls and so our estimates would not include the occurrence or biomass of these rare species.Commercial fishing data was accessed through a DFO R script detailed here: https://github.com/pbsassess/gfdata. Local scale commercial fishing effort was calculated from this data. The substrate layers were obtained from a substrate model (Gregr et al. 2021). The oceanographic layers (bottom temperature, dissolved oxygen, tidal and circulation speeds, primary production) were obtained from a hindcast simulation of the British Columbia continental margin (BCCM) model (Peña et al. 2019).Uncertainties:Species that are not well sampled by the trawl surveys may not be accurately estimated by our model. The model did not include spatiotemporal random effects, which likely underestimates spatiotemporal variability in the region. It is also important to underline covariate uncertainty and model uncertainty. The hotspot estimates provide one measure of model uncertainty/certainty.

This map data displays environmentally impacted sites in Saskatchewan with location, confirmed substance and current status.The Ministry of Environment is responsible for regulating environmentally impacted sites in Saskatchewan to protect the environment and the public.  An environmentally impacted site is an area of land or water that contains a substance that may cause or is causing an adverse effect.An adverse effect is an impairment of or damage to the environment or harm to human health caused by any chemical, physical or biological alterations or any combination of them.Please note: information may take up to 30 days to be updated and is subject to change at any time.For further information, please contact the Ministry of Environment Inquiry Centre (Toll Free): 800-567-4224, centre.inquiry@gov.sk.ca or visit the environmentally impacted sites page on Saskatchewan.ca. Terms and definitionsObject ID: An internal GeoHub record ID number. This number can be ignored.  Case ID: The Case ID is the ministry’s file number – a unique identifier. It is NOT the date the site became impacted.  Status – The stages of management for an environmentally impacted site.   Notification: The ministry has received notification that pollutants have been discovered at the site.  The concentration of this pollutant exceeds the threshold outlined in the Saskatchewan Environmental Code and must be reported. The pollutants may cause an adverse effect to the environment or human health. The ministry has been made aware of this and has determined that the site is an environmentally impacted site. Assessment: The site is currently undergoing, or has recently completed, analysis to determine the cause, nature or extent of potential or existing adverse effect (e.g. a Phase 2 Environmental Site Assessment). Corrective Action Plan: The site is currently undergoing, or has recently completed, activity that aims to prevent, minimize, mitigate, remedy or reclaim adverse effects (e.g. removal of impacts by excavation). Closure: This is a historical status term for environmentally impacted sites that is no longer used. The Notice of Site Condition status replaces the former status of Closure. It indicates that corrective actions have been completed at the site, endpoints have been achieved and an updated environmental status of the site has been provided to the ministry. However, no application has been made for a Notice of Site Condition certificate.  Notice of Site Condition: The ministry is satisfied that an acceptable risk level exists for the area of the site addressed in the corrective action plan. Confirmed substance: The substances of concern at the site. Examples that may cause an adverse effect are petroleum hydrocarbons, toxic metals, air pollutants, acids and solvents.

Description:Seasonal climatologies for salinity of the Northeast Pacific Ocean were computed to cover the period 2001 to 2020. Historibal observations included all available conductivity-temperature_depth (CTD), bottle and profiling floats in the NODC World Ocean Database, Marine Environmental Data Services (MEDS), Institute of Ocean Sciences Water Properties website and the Canadian Integrated Ocean Observing System (CIOOS Pacific).Methods:Interpolation was carried out in up to fifty-two vertical levels from surface to 5000m. Data-Interpolating Variational Analysis (DIVA) was used for spatial interpolation for all years within each season and estimates projected onto a consistent grid. The average of the grid nodes was calculated to obtain the seasonal climatology. DIVA was used again on the final climatology followed by a median filter and a 5-point smoother. Spring months were defined as April to June, summer months were defined as July to September, fall months were defined as October to December, and winter months were defined as January to March. The data available here contain raster layers of seasonal salinity climatology for the Canadian Pacific Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), a subset of seasonal climatology of the Northeast Pacific Ocean, with high spatial resolution of 1/300 degree.Data Sources:NODC, MEDS, IOS and CIOOS Pacific Data.Uncertainties:Uncertainties are introduced when quality controlled observational data are spatially interpolated to varying distances from the observation point. Climatological averages are calculated from these interpolated values.

The Canadian Environmental Sustainability Indicators (CESI) program provides data and information to track Canada's performance on key environmental sustainability issues. The Canada's ocean drainage regions layer was developed using the Drainage regions of Canada to illustrate the water bodies into which the 25 drainage regions ultimately drain.Canadian Environmental Sustainability Indicators: https://www.canada.ca/environmental-indicators

Environmental Monitoring Program data for aquaculture.

**PLEASE NOTE:** The Environmental Monitoring System will be replaced by the EnMoDS system on March 5th, 2026. The EMS results objects will not contain new data after Feb 26th, 2026. For recent data please refer to [EnMoDS spatial locations and location groups](https://catalogue.data.gov.bc.ca/dataset/f60fa4b5-e3d0-44ad-b5d8-778d29764e34). 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)

Environmental Liabilities Dashboard

The Canadian Environmental Sustainability Indicators (CESI) program provides data and information to track Canada's performance on key environmental sustainability issues. The Air quality indicators track ambient concentrations of fine particulate matter, ground-level ozone, sulphur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, and volatile organic compounds at the national, regional and urban levels and at local monitoring stations. The national and regional indicators are presented with their corresponding Canadian Ambient Air Quality Standard when available. Canadians are exposed to air pollutants on a daily basis, and this exposure can cause adverse health and environmental effects. Information is provided to Canadians in a number of formats including: static and interactive maps, charts and graphs, HTML and CSV data tables and downloadable reports. See the supplementary documentation for the data sources and details on how the data were collected and how the indicator was calculated.Canadian Environmental Sustainability Indicators: https://www.canada.ca/environmental-indicators