The objective of the study was to describe the spatial distribution of krill in eastern Canadian waters using a statistical modelling approach in support of the identification of important habitat for the western North Atlantic (WNA) blue whale (Balaenoptera musculus). Generalized Additive Models (GAMs) were used to predict ‘Significant Aggregations of Krill’ (SAK), i.e., areas where dense krill aggregations would have a greater probability of occurring. SAK cover less than 2% of the entire spatial domain and their location varied among krill categories and seasons. These SAK are interpreted as areas where environmental conditions promote krill aggregation on a regular basis and therefore are potentially important for WNA blue whale foraging in eastern Canadian waters.Plourde, S., Lehoux, C., McQuinn, I.H., and Lesage, V. 2016. Describing krill distribution in the western North Atlantic using statistical habitat models. DFO Can. Sci. Advis. Sec. Res. Doc. 2016/111. v + 34 p.

This report outlines the results of a project that created a series of maps tracking inshore historical Lobster fishing district boundaries from 1899 to present. This work has been part of Fisheries and Oceans Canada’s (DFO) Blue Economy Lobster Team (BELT) pilot project on the Lobster fishery. To provide the context for the use of historical information within fisheries research, this report provides a brief summation of the discipline of history, its purpose, and its methods. It also describes the different ways that historical data has been used to support the analysis of fisheries, and some of the ways that historians have integrated the techniques of natural and social sciences into their own work. It provides an overview of how the BELT has incorporated historical methods and methodologies into the team’s overall work. The report presents two sets of maps that outline geographical changes in Lobster fishing districts (called Lobster Fishing Areas after 1985) as well as changes in minimum legal size (MLS) and season length information. These maps help to inform a larger understanding of the historical Lobster fishery in the present-day Maritimes Region, and highlight several themes within the fishery. This includes the increasingly intensive regulation of the fishery over time, the inshore nature of the Lobster fishery for the majority of the twentieth century, the variability in the boundaries of Lobster districts over time, and the broad transition from a cannery-based market to a live Lobster market. The maps taken as a whole help to demonstrate consistency of the regulatory approach to Lobster over the twentieth century. However, there are limitations to the interpretive capacity of these maps, as more work should be done to investigate the specific reasoning behind why each change occurred.**Note: The outer boundaries depicted from 1899-1974 are not meant to represent areas where DFO or its predecessor departments had complete or authoritative control of the inshore fishery. In past regulations, districts were described as “on and along the coast.” The outer boundaries assigned to maps prior to 1985 were chosen to make the maps easy to understand relative to current lobster fishing areas.

Many communities in Canada depend to some extent on forestry and the forest sector. The importance of the forest industry to the regional economy can be assessed using the CanEcumene GIS Database. “Ecumene” is a term used by geographers, meaning “inhabited lands.” A forest ecumene refers to areas where human settlement coincides with forested areas, including locations where people depend on the forest for their livelihood. Populated places in the ecumene database are referenced using natural boundaries, as opposed to administrative or census boundaries, and provide a more suitable means for integrating socio-economic data with ecological and environmental data in a region.An analysis of ecumene labour force data and location of mill facilities resulted in a generalized rendering showing regional dependency of the forest industry. The location of mill facilities layer includes information on mill type (i.e., pulp and saw) and ownership. The sensitivity to forest industry layer shows which forest communities and regions are more sensitive to economic impacts in the forest industry.Two layers are provided: the sensitivity of forest communities and regions to forest industry, and the location of mill facilities.

The Labour Force Distribution (LFD) maps are derived from the CanEcumene 2.0 Geodatabase using custom tabulations of census-based labour force data. These LFD maps were calculated for each of the five major natural resource sectors in Canada: Forestry, Fisheries, Agriculture, Minerals, and Petroleum and Coal. The measure used is the labour force of each sector as a proportion of the goods-producing sectors in the economy. Labour force proportions were first calculated at the individual community level, and then interpolated on a regional level using GIS (see Eddy et. al. 2020 for more detail). In effect, these maps show the strong importance of Canada’s natural resource sectors in various regions of the country. The darker the tone in each map indicates a region’s higher degree of dependency on a given sector for their economic livelihood.

ECO - Business and economic (economy) Economic activities or employment. For example, resources describing labor; revenue; commerce; industry; tourism and ecotourism; forestry; fisheries; commercial or subsistence hunting; and exploration and exploitation of resources, such as minerals, oil, and gas.

The national agricultural ecumene includes all dissemination areas with 'significant' agricultural activity. Agricultural indicators, such as the ratio of agricultural land on census farms relative to total land area, and total economic value of agricultural production, are used. Regional variations are also taken into account. The ecumene is generalized for small-scale mapping.A new version of the agricultural ecumene is generated every census years (in vector format) since 1986.This file was produced by Statistics Canada, Agriculture Division, Remote Sensing and Geospatial Analysis section, 2017, Ottawa.

The national agricultural ecumene includes all dissemination areas with 'significant' agricultural activity. Agricultural indicators, such as the ratio of agricultural land on census farms relative to total land area, and total economic value of agricultural production, are used. Regional variations are also taken into account. The ecumene is generalized for small-scale mapping.A new version of the agricultural ecumene is generated every census years (in vector format) since 1986.This file was produced by Statistics Canada, Agriculture Division, Remote Sensing and Geospatial Analysis section, 2017, Ottawa.

The national agricultural ecumene includes all dissemination areas with 'significant' agricultural activity. Agricultural indicators, such as the ratio of agricultural land on census farms relative to total land area, and total economic value of agricultural production, are used. Regional variations are also taken into account. The ecumene is generalized for small-scale mapping.A new version of the agricultural ecumene is generated every census years (in vector format) since 1986.This file was produced by Statistics Canada, Agriculture Division, Ottawa.

Coastal vegetated ecosystems are recognized for their role in cycling and storing carbon in the world’s oceans (i.e., blue carbon); however, high uncertainty in carbon sequestration rates is partly due to an absence of studies estimating carbon export to the deep sea. We modeled export from nearshore kelp forests and seagrass beds, showing variability by orders of magnitude across spatial scales (3 to hundreds of kilometers), kelp and seagrass species, seasons, and carbon forms, raising caution in using generalized export rates in blue carbon accounting. Our results also show rapid (20 to 30 days) and extensive export of neutrally buoyant dissolved organic carbon particles to the shelf break (up to 44% within 90 days), contrasting sinking particulate organic carbon particles that largely remained within 100-meter water depth in the nearshore. These results improve estimates of carbon sequestration by blue carbon ecosystems and reveal contrasting patterns of export relative to other regions of the globe. Cite this data as: Kira A. Krumhansl et al., Pathways of blue carbon export from kelp and seagrass beds along the Atlantic coast of Nova Scotia.Sci. Adv.11,eadw1952(2025).DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adw1952

The national agricultural ecumene includes all dissemination areas with 'significant' agricultural activity. Agricultural indicators, such as the ratio of agricultural land on census farms relative to total land area, and total economic value of agricultural production, are used. Regional variations are also taken into account. The ecumene is generalized for small-scale mapping.A new version of the agricultural ecumene is generated every census years (in vector format) since 1986.This file was produced by Statistics Canada, Agriculture Division, Ottawa.