Environment and Climate Change Canada

Monitoring activities have collected bulk suspended sediment samples using continuous flow centrifuges and Phillips Tube samplers in the Lower Athabasca River and tributaries respectively. Further, in the absence of pre-development monitoring for this region, high fidelity dated lake sediment...

Benthic invertebrates monitoring includes both lotic (rivers/streams) and lentic (wetlands) ecosystems. Aquatic biomonitoring provides a direct measure of change in biotic populations and communities in relation to benchmark or reference conditions and can help identify the ecological effects of...

The health of individual amphibians, amphibian populations, and their wetland habitats are monitored in the oil sands region and at reference locations. Contaminants assessments are done at all sites. Amphibians developing near oil sands activities may be exposed to concentrations of oil...

Spanish Harbour was identified as an Area of Concern (AOC) due to degraded water quality and environmental health and was recognized as an Area in Recovery in 1999. As part of the Great Lakes Action Plan, assessments of benthic conditions in Spanish Harbour have been conducted periodically since...

Water quality and ecosystem health data collected in the Great Lakes and priority tributaries to determine baseline water quality status, long term trends and spatial distributions, the effectiveness of management actions, determine compliance with water quality objectives and identify emerging...

Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) uses satellite remote sensing to monitor lake-wide water quality indicators across Canadian inland waters. Remote sensing provides a cost-effective solution to obtain frequent lake-wide water quality observations in support of lake science and inland...

Water quality and ecosystem health data are collected in the nearshore zone of the Great Lakes to address the problem of nuisance benthic algae. Monitoring data include physical and chemical water quality data as well as biological data, primarily from Cladophora and dreissenid mussels on the...

Habitat and ecosystem data used to conduct a baseline survey of coastal habitat in the Canadian Great Lakes in support of the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement (Annex 7, Habitat and Species). The baseline habitat survey integrates various internal and external data sources that are collected or...

Habitat and ecosystem data used to conduct a baseline survey of coastal habitat in Lake Erie, St. Clair River, Lake St. Clair and Detroit River are included in this dataset. The Lake Erie Survey methodology consists of four general steps; 1) delineating the coastal ecosystem into coastal units...

Habitat and ecosystem data used to conduct a baseline survey of coastal habitat in Lake Ontario, Niagara River and the St. Lawrence River (up to the Quebec border) are included in this dataset. The Lake Ontario Survey methodology consists of four general steps; 1) delineating the coastal...

Deltaic Wetlands Biomonitoring Wetland macroinvertebrates, comprising insects, crustaceans, molluscs and worms represent a group of organisms forming a critical food resource for consumer organisms (e.g. fish, birds), that are used widely in environmental monitoring programs to assess both the...

In 2015 as part of the Canadian Artic Weather Science (CAWS) project, Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) established an enhanced monitoring reference site at Iqaluit, Nunavut (CYFB, 63°45N, 68°33W) in the eastern Canadian Arctic. The site was strategically selected at the loci of...

The Whitehorse enhanced meteorological site is located at Erik Nielsen Whitehorse International Airport (CYXY, 60°43N, 135°04W). This scientific observation site aims to provide a better understanding of the region’s weather conditions to help improve local weather forecasts across the Canadian...

Water quality and ecosystem health data used to conduct a cumulative effects assessment of Canadian Great Lakes nearshore waters in support of the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement are included in this dataset. The data was collected by various government and non-government agencies and...

Atmospheric concentrations and deposition rates of particulate elements are important indicators for determining the potential impacts of the oil sands industries on the local environment. The datasets consist of measured ambient air concentrations (in PM2.5 and PM2.5-10) and estimated deposition...

Precipitation measurements in the Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) surface network are a necessary component for monitoring weather and climate and are required for flood and water resource forecasting, numerical weather prediction and many other applications that impact the health...

The Great Lakes Basin Integrated Nutrient Dataset compiles and standardizes phosphorus, nitrogen, and suspended solids data collected between the 2000-2019 water years from multiple Canadian and American sources around the Great Lakes. Ultimately, the goal is to enable regional nutrient data...

Sediment profile imagery (SPI) (also known as REMOTS (Rhoads and Germano, 1982)) facilitates the assessment of the biophysical processes that occur in the benthic environment through the acquisition and analysis of high resolution images of vertical sections and surfaces of the seafloor. The SPI...

This data collection contains particulate metals data measured at sites in Canada. For additional data on pollutants in air, also see the data collection of Anthropogenic Organic Pollutants in Air. For additional data on metals, also see the data collection of Metals in Precipitation.

Total gaseous mercury (TGM) data are currently collected by Environment and Climate Change Canada at two Wood Buffalo Environmental Association (WBEA) Air Monitoring Stations (AMS). Preliminary, hourly averaged TGM data from the oil sands region are available for: WBEA AMS 6 - Patricia McInnes,...