The 246 Watershed Groups of BC based on the 1:50,000 scale Canadian National Topographic Series of Maps.

Fisheries Information Summary System (FISS) layer of Historic (pre 2001) Fish Distribution Zones of BC streams. Includes salmonid rearing and spawning zones. Georeferenced to the stream centreline network layer of the 1:50,000 scale BC Watershed Atlas.

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.

One of the spatial views of the BC WATERSHED ATLAS 50K, which is the digital basemap representation of the aquatic Man-made waterbodies, Wetlands and Double-line Rivers based on the 1:50,000 scale Canadian National Topographic Series of Maps.

Fisheries Information Summary System (FISS) layer of Historic (pre 2001) Fish Distribution Points of BC Streams. Points represent site locations where a fish species is rearing, spawning or observed or where a point is located at the mouth of a stream it indicates the presence of a fish species somewhere in the stream as a whole. Georeferenced to the stream centreline network layer of the 1:50,000 scale BC Watershed Atlas.

This file contains a generalized representation of watersheds developed from the 1:50,000 BC Watershed Atlas with each region coded for occurrence of freshwater fish species (including anadromous salmon in their freshwater stages). The initial fish species codes for presence/absence in each watershed were derived from an GIS overlay of fish species occurrences within broadly defined fish regions for BC. This overlay of fish ranges describes the occurrences of fish species in 30 regions throughout the province. These broad species ranges were derived from McPhail and Carveth's 'Key to Freshwater Fish of BC' and refined further based on the most current expert opinion. Coding for watershed polygons based on this expert opinion was originally: 0= out of species range; 4 = core range; 5= introduced range; 6= peripheral range; 9= estuarine polygons only. A further refinement of watershed fish species coding was developed from actual observations of fish species in the lakes and rivers of British Columbia. This data comes from a number of fish inventory sources. Watersheds with known records of occurrence for each fish species were consequently recoded as such: 4, 5, 6, 9 now equal '1' if a museum record, and, 4, 5, 6, 9 now equal '2' for a less reliable record, and, 0 now equals '8'. for an out-of range record

Watershed polygons representing the Major Watershed Code Numbers of BC. Based on the 1:50,000 scale Canadian National Topographic Series of Maps.

This file contains a representation of 3rd order watersheds developed for the 1:50,000 BC Watershed Atlas with each watershed polygon coded for occurrence of freshwater fish species (including anadromous salmon in their freshwater stages). The initial fish species codes for presence/absence in each watershed were derived from an GIS overlay of fish species occurrences within broadly defined fish regions for BC. This overlay of fish ranges describes the occurrences of fish species in 30 regions throughout the province. These broad species ranges were derived from McPhail and Carveth's 'Key to Freshwater Fish of BC' and refined further based on the most current expert opinion. Coding for watershed polygons based on this expert opinion was originally: 0= out of species range; 4 = core range; 5= introduced range; 6= peripheral range; 9= estuarine polygons only. A further refinement of watershed fish species coding was developed from actual observations of fish species in the lakes and rivers of British Columbia. This data comes from a number of fish inventory sources. Watersheds with known records of occurrence for each fish species were consequently recoded as such: 4, 5, 6, 9 now equal '1' if a museum record, and, 4, 5, 6, 9 now equal '2' for a less reliable record, and, 0 now equals '8'. for an out-of range record

Site locations of aquatic invasive species occurrences throughout the province. The aquatic invasive species include species of amphibians, fishes, invertebrates, plants, alga and turtles. This spatial dataset was compiled from a number of data sources including The Invasive Plant Council of BC; the Beaty Biodiversity Museum; the Royal BC Museum; the Fisheries Information Summary System; E-Flora BC; Electronic Atlas of Plants of BC; and from private data compilations(spreadsheets) and personal consultation with BC Ministry of Environment staff and other local experts, peer-reviewed articles and other unpublished technical reports. Full Citations are included

Contains all primary and secondary matches between 1:20K and 1:50K waterbody polygons. This attribute table links the new Freshwater Atlas watershed codes with the existing 1:50K Watershed Atlas watershed codes for cross reference purposes