This theme presents observations of invasive exotic species (IAS)transmitted and validated using the Sentinelle tool, an EEE detection system.An invasive exotic species is a plant, animal or microorganism (virus,bacteria or fungi) that are introduced outside of their natural range. Sonestablishment or its spread may pose a threat to the environment,the economy or society. The species listed are species of fauna and floraconcerning (or potentially worrying) for Quebec's biodiversity. Ellesinclude EEE present in Quebec and EEE not listed in Quebec atmonitor.**This third party metadata element was translated using an automated translation tool (Amazon Translate).**

Description:These commercial whale watching data are comprised of two datasets. First, the ‘whale_watching_trips_jun_sep_british_columbia’ data layer summarizes commercial whale watching trips that took place in 2019, 2020 and 2021 during the summer months (June to September). The second data layer, ‘wildlife_viewing_events_jun_sep_british_columbia’ contains estimated wildlife viewing events carried out by commercial whale watching vessels for the same years (2019, 2020 and 2021) and months (June to September). Commercial whale watching trips and wildlife viewing events are summarized using the same grid, and they can be related using the unique cell identifier field ‘cell_id’. The bulk of this work was carried out at University of Victoria and was funded by the Marine Environmental Observation, Prediction and Response (MEOPAR) Network under the ‘Whale watching AIS Vessel movement Evaluation’ or WAVE project (2018 – 2022). The aim of the WAVE project was to increase the understanding of whale watching activities in Canada’s Pacific region using vessel traffic data derived from AIS (Automatic Identification System). The work was finalized by DFO Science in the Pacific Region. These spatial data products of commercial whale watching operations can be used to inform Marine Spatial Planning, conservation planning activities, and threat assessments involving vessel activities in British Columbia.Methods:A list of commercial whale watching vessels based in British Columbia and Washington State and their corresponding MMSIs (Maritime Mobile Service Identity) was compiled from the whale watching companies and Marine Traffic (www.marinetraffic.com). This list was used to query cleaned CCG AIS data to extract AIS positions corresponding to commercial whale watching vessels. A commercial whale watching trip was defined as a set of consecutive AIS points belonging to the same vessel departing and ending in one of the previously identified whale watching home ports. A classification model (unsupervised Hidden Markov Model) using vessel speed as the main variable was developed to classify AIS vessel positions into wildlife-viewing and non wildlife viewing events. Commercial whale watching trips in the south and north-east of Vancouver Island were limited to a duration of minimum 1 hour and maximum 3.5 hours. For trips in the west coast of Vancouver island the maximum duration was set to 6 hours. Wildlife-viewing events duration was set to minimum of 10 minutes to a maximum of 1 hour duration. For more information on methodology, consult metadata pdf available with the Open Data record.References:Nesdoly, A. 2021. Modelling marine vessels engaged in wildlife-viewing behaviour using Automatic Identification Systems (AIS). Available from: https://dspace.library.uvic.ca/handle/1828/13300.Data Sources:Oceans Network Canada (ONC) provided encoded AIS data for years 2019, 2020 and 2021, within a bounding box including Vancouver Island and Puget Sound used to generate these products. This AIS data was in turn provided by the Canadian Coast Guard (CCG) via a licensing agreement between the CCG and ONC for the non-commercial use of CCG AIS Data. More information here: https://www.oceannetworks.ca/science/community-based-monitoring/marine-domain-awareness-program/ Molly Fraser provided marine mammal sightings data collected on board a whale watching vessels to develop wildlife-viewing events classification models. More information about this dataset here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308597X20306709?via%3DihubUncertainties:The main source of uncertainty is with the conversion of AIS point locations into track segments, specifically when the distance between positions is large (e.g., greater than 1000 meters).

Historical finds of Coleophora laricella

**Attention: there is a new version of this product (SCANFI v2)**SCANFI v2 can be found here: https://doi.org/10.23687/07653869-f303-46c2-a04e-9ab479b73cbfThis data publication contains a set of 30m resolution raster files representing 2020 Canadian wall-to-wall maps of broad land cover type, forest canopy height, degree of crown closure and aboveground tree biomass, along with species composition of several major tree species. The Spatialized CAnadian National Forest Inventory data product (SCANFI) was developed using the newly updated National Forest Inventory photo-plot dataset, which consists of a regular sample grid of photo-interpreted high-resolution imagery covering all of Canada’s non-arctic landmass. SCANFI was produced using temporally harmonized summer and winter Landsat spectral imagery along with hundreds of tile-level regional models based on a novel k-nearest neighbours and random forest imputation method. A full description of all methods and validation analyses can be found in Guindon et al. (2024). As the Arctic ecozones are outside NFI’s covered areas, the vegetation attributes in these regions were predicted using a single random forest model. The vegetation attributes in these arctic areas could not be rigorously validated. The raster file « SCANFI_aux_arcticExtrapolationArea.tif » identifies these zones.SCANFI is not meant to replace nor ignore provincial inventories which could include better and more regularly updated inputs, training data and local knowledge. Instead, SCANFI was developed to provide a current, spatially-explicit estimate of forest attributes, using a consistent data source and methodology across all provincial boundaries and territories. SCANFI is the first coherent 30m Canadian wall-to-wall map of tree structure and species composition and opens novel opportunities for a plethora of studies in a number of areas, such as forest economics, fire science and ecology.# Limitations1- The spectral disturbances of some areas disturbed by pests are not comprehensively represented in the training set, thus making it impossible to predict all defoliation cases. One such area, severely impacted by the recent eastern spruce budworm outbreak, is located on the North Shore of the St-Lawrence River. These forests are misrepresented in our training data, there is therefore an imprecision in our estimates.2- Attributes of open stand classes, namely shrub, herbs, rock and bryoid, are more difficult to estimate through the photointerpretation of aerial images. Therefore, these estimates could be less reliable than the forest attribute estimates.3- As reported in the manuscript, the uncertainty of tree species cover predictions is relatively high. This is particularly true for less abundant tree species, such as ponderosa pine and tamarack. The tree species layers are therefore suitable for regional and coarser scale studies. Also, the broadleaf proportion are slightly underestimated in this product version.4- Our validation indicates that the areas in Yukon exhibit a notably lower R2 value. Consequently, estimates within these regions are less dependable. 5- Urban areas and roads are classified as rock, according to the 2020 Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada land-use classification map. Even though those areas contain mostly buildings and infrastructure, they may also contain trees. Forested urban parks are usually classified as forested areas. Vegetation attributes are also predicted for forested areas in agricultural regions.Updates of this dataset will eventually be available on this metadata page.# Details on the product development and validation can be found in the following publication:Guindon, L., Manka, F., Correia, D.L.P., Villemaire, P., Smiley, B., Bernier, P., Gauthier, S., Beaudoin, A., Boucher, J., and Boulanger, Y. 2024. A new approach for Spatializing the Canadian National Forest Inventory (SCANFI) using Landsat dense time series. Can. J. For. Res. https://doi.org/10.1139/cjfr-2023-0118# Please cite this dataset as: Guindon L., Villemaire P., Correia D.L.P., Manka F., Lacarte S., Smiley B. 2023. SCANFI: Spatialized CAnadian National Forest Inventory data product. Natural Resources Canada, Canadian Forest Service, Laurentian Forestry Centre, Quebec, Canada. https://doi.org/10.23687/18e6a919-53fd-41ce-b4e2-44a9707c52dc # The following raster layers are available:• NFI land cover class values: Land cover classes include Water, Rock, Bryoid, Herbs, Shrub, Treed broadleaf, Treed mixed and Treed conifer• Aboveground tree biomass (tonnes/ha): biomass was derived from total merchantable volume estimates produced by provincial agencies• Height (meters): vegetation height• Crown closure (%): percentage of pixel covered by the tree canopy• Tree species cover (%): estimated as the proportion of the canopy covered by each tree species: o Balsam fir tree cover in percentage (Abies balsamea) o Black spruce tree cover in percentage (Picea mariana) o Douglas fir tree cover in percentage (Pseudotsuga menziesii) o Jack pine tree cover in percentage (Pinus banksiana) o Lodgepole pine tree cover in percentage (Pinus contorta) o Ponderosa pine tree cover in percentage (Pinus ponderosa) o Tamarack tree cover in percentage (Larix laricina) o White and red pine tree cover in percentage (Pinus strobus and Pinus resinosa) o Broadleaf tree cover in percentage (PrcB) o Other coniferous tree cover in percentage (PrcC)

These products are derived from RGB (red/green/blue) images, a satellite processing technique that uses a combination of satellite sensor bands (also called channels) and applies a red/green/blue (RGB) filter to each of them. The result is a false-color image, i.e. an image that does not correspond to what the human eye would see, but offers high contrast between different cloud types and surface features. The on-board sensor of a weather satellite obtains two basic types of information: visible light data (reflected light) reflecting off clouds and different surface types, also known as "reflectance", and infrared data (emitted radiation) which are short-wave and long-wave radiation emitted by clouds and surface features. RGBs are specially designed to combine this type of satellite data, resulting in an information-rich final product.Other products are based on the enhancement of channel data for a single wavelength, also aimed at highlighting meteorological features of the observed surface or clouds, but in a simpler way since only a single wavelength is involved. This older approach is still useful today, as its simplicity makes image interpretation easier in some cases.

This dataset includes fifteen GeoTIFFs of Sea Surface Temperature (SST) organized into five distinct marine regions along Canada's Pacific coast, derived from Sentinel 3 satellite data for the period of April-September 2017. For each region, three GeoTIFFs are provided which represent the mean, maximum, and standard deviation values of SST (degrees Celcius). Jupyter notebooks with Python code used for data downloading and processing are also included for reference.The primary objective of this dataset is to provide detailed, regional spatial information on SST for key areas of Canada's Pacific coast, including the nearshore environment. The data can be used for various applications including species distribution modelling.This dataset is intended to fill the knowledge gap by providing high-resolution, spatially explicit regional SST data for Canada's Pacific coast. Existing datasets may not provide sufficient spatial resolution or may not include comprehensive statistical measures (mean, max, standard deviation) of SST for these specific areas.The dataset is structured by region. For each of the five regions, a set of three related GeoTIFFs is provided, representing the mean, max, and standard deviation of SST. Within each regional set, the three layers share the same spatial reference system, resolution, and extent, making them suitable for direct use in analytical stacks (e.g., for species distribution models).The Sentinel-3 satellites, part of the European Union's Copernicus Programme, are equipped with the Sea and Land Surface Temperature Radiometer (SLSTR) which measures SST among other parameters. The SST data products in this dataset are derived from Sentinel-3 satellite data.The intent of the data is to represent the marine environment and so a mask that excludes land was applied during data download and extraction. The SST data products have been resampled using a bilinear interpolation from their native resolution to a 20 m resolution to provide more detailed spatial information.

PURPOSE:In this study, we examined the structure and function of the Southampton Island marine food web across 149 species of benthic and pelagic invertebrates, fishes, marine mammals and seabirds collected from 2016 to 2019, to provide a baseline for future studies that aim to quantify temporal changes in food web structuring. More specifically,we used a multi-biomarker approach combining stable isotopes and HBIs to: (i) determine the vertical trophic structure of the marine food web, (ii) investigate the contribution of benthic and pelagic-derived prey to the higher trophic level species of the Arctic food web, and (iii) determine the role of ice algae and phytoplankton carbon source use across different trophic levels and compartments (pelagic and benthic). By shedding new light on the functioning of the Southampton Island food web and specifically how the contribution of ice algae and benthic habitat shapes its structure, these results will be relevant to adaptive management and conservation initiatives implemented in response to anthropogenic stressors and climate change. DESCRIPTION:Climate-driven alterations of the marine environment are most rapid in Arctic and subarctic regions, including Hudson Bay in northern Canada, where declining sea ice, warming surface waters and ocean acidification are occurring at alarming rates. These changes are altering primary production patterns that will ultimately cascade up through the food web. Here, we investigated (i) the vertical trophic structure of the Southampton Island marine ecosystem in northern Hudson Bay, (ii) the contribution of benthic and pelagic-derived prey to the higher trophic level species, and (iii) the relative contribution of ice algae and phytoplankton derived carbon in sustaining this ecosystem. For this purpose, we measured bulk stable carbon, nitrogen and sulfur isotope ratios as well as highly branched isoprenoids in samples belonging to 149 taxa, including invertebrates, fishes, seabirds and marine mammals. We found that the benthic invertebrates occupied 4 trophic levels and that the overall trophic system went up to an average trophic position of 4.8. The average δ34S signature of pelagic organisms indicated that they exploit both benthic and pelagic food sources, suggesting there are many interconnections between these compartments in this coastal area. The relatively high sympagic carbon dependence of Arctic marine mammals (53.3 ± 22.2 %) through their consumption of benthic invertebrate prey, confirms the important role of the benthic subweb for sustaining higher trophic level consumers in the coastal pelagic environment. Therefore, a potential decrease in the productivity of ice algae could lead to a profound alteration of the benthic food web and a cascading effect on this Arctic ecosystem.Collaborators:Centre for Earth Observation Science, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada - R´emi Amiraux, C.J. Mundy, Jens K. Ehn, Z.A. Kuzyk.Quebec-Ocean, Sentinel North and Takuvik, Biology Department, Laval University, Quebec, Quebec, Canada - Marie Pierrejean.Scottish Association for Marine Science, Oban, UK - Thomas A. Brown.Department of Natural Resource Sciences, McGill University, Ste. Anne de Bellevue, Quebec, Canada - Kyle H. Elliott.Department of Biological Sciences, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada - Steven H. Ferguson, Cory J.D. Matthews, Cortney A. Watt, David J. Yurkowski.School of the Environment, University of Windsor, Windsor, Ontario, Canada - Aaron T. Fisk.Science and Technology Branch, Environment and Climate Change Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada - Grant Gilchrist.College of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences, University of Alaska Fairbanks, Fairbanks, AK, USA - Katrin Iken.Department of Earth Sciences, University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, NB, Canada - Audrey Limoges.Department of Integrative Biology, University of Windsor, Windsor, Ontario, Canada - Oliver P. Love, Wesley R. Ogloff.Department of Arctic Biology, The University Centre in Svalbard, Longyearbyen, Norway - Janne E. Søreide.

All available bathymetry and related information for Lac Sante were collected and hard copy maps digitized where necessary. The data were validated against more recent data (Shuttle Radar Topography Mission 'SRTM' imagery and Indian Remote Sensing 'IRS' imagery) and corrected where necessary. The published data set contains the lake bathymetry formatted as an Arc ascii grid. Bathymetric contours and the boundary polygon are available as shapefiles.

High-Resolution Digital Elevation Model (HRDEM) generated from LiDAR. This data collection includes a Digital Terrain Model (DTM) and a Digital Surface Model (DSM). The HRDEM product is referenced to the Canadian Geodetic Vertical Datum of 2013 (CGVD2013). Source data for HRDEM datasets is acquired through multiple projects with different partners. Since data is being acquired by project, there is no integration or edgematching done between projects. The data in this collection have been reprojected from the source reference system to the Canada Atlas Lambert projection (EPSG:3979). **This third party metadata element follows the Spatio Temporal Asset Catalog (STAC) specification.**

The Tesselle Forest Information System (SIFORT) is a system that was created in order to meet various needs for analysis and knowledge data on Quebec territory. SIFORT is a database composed of polygonal units of 15 seconds (latitude) by 15 seconds (longitude), whose average area is approximately 14 hectares. Information from the tesserla is obtained by assigning the forest data to the centroid of the tesserla. Thus, for each of the tesserae, we find information such as the type of cover, the type of disturbance of origin, the year of the disturbance, the species, the density, etc. This system integrates forest information from the various forest inventories (first, second, third, third, third, third, third, fourth and fifth inventories, when available) and offers the advantage of constituting a fixed analysis grid in space. Making it possible to relate the forest composition of the territory to the various natural disturbances (e.g. fire and insects) and forest interventions, SIFORT makes it possible to feed various statistical and temporal studies and analyses whose objective is to ensure the sustainable management of Quebec's forest territory.**This third party metadata element was translated using an automated translation tool (Amazon Translate).**