Exploring the St. Lawrence On-Line

Ever since French explorer Jacques Cartier first followed its sparkling waters into the heartland of the New World four centuries ago, the St. Lawrence River has served as Canada's most important commercial waterway. Over the past 100 years, unprecedented development along its shores and the exploitation of its natural resources have had a profound effect on the river's aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems.

To assess the impact of human activity on these ecosystems--and to protect the estimated 27 000 species of plants and animals that live in them--a team of 40 scientists from Environment Canada and the Quebec Ministry of the Environment have created an Internet atlas of the river's ecology and biology. The team spent five years collecting and analyzing information gleaned from 30 years' worth of scientific papers, surveys, reports and databases, and converting it into mappable data. The purpose of the atlas, created under the Canada-Quebec St. Lawrence Vision 2000 action plan, is to raise awareness of areas where species are particularly vulnerable, and to help identify potential sites for conservation.

Known as the Biodiversity Portrait of the St. Lawrence River, the atlas covers the Quebec region of the river; that is, the upper two-thirds that run from Lake St. Francis to the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Users can take a virtual tour of the St. Lawrence by viewing maps, charts and text summaries that describe the region from several different standpoints, including ecological structure, biodiversity, human impacts, and priority conservation areas. The atlas's ecological mapping system divides the river into natural regions and riparian landscapes, and allows users to explore at an even closer range by incorporating a georeferenced grid that breaks each terrestrial region into 100 km² parcels.

The ecological structure of the river is described in physical terms, such as climate, land use, vegetation and development for terrestrial ecosystems, and sediment, water depth, hydrography, and salinity for aquatic ecosystems. Data on more than 5 000 species of flora and fauna--including vascular plants, aquatic invertebrates, fish, reptiles, amphibians, birds and mammals--are used to evaluate the biodiversity of the St. Lawrence, and their distribution across the region is mapped.

In addition to identifying locations where human effects are evident--such as areas of chemical contamination, commercial fishing, and places where shorelines are eroding due to shipping traffic or development, or where wetlands have been affected--the accompanying text also analyzes the data and predicts possible future impacts. This information, combined with the data on species biodiversity, is used to determine priority conservation areas based on species richness and vulnerability.

By helping to make the links between human activities, habitat and biodiversity easy to see and understand, the new atlas enables users--from politicians and resource managers to members of the public--to consider the impacts of their decisions on the environment before they act. It will also help scientists develop more effective models for predicting how changes in habitat and human activity affect biodiversity in other ecosystems and regions. The Biodiversity Portrait of the St. Lawrence is on the Internet at http://lavoieverte.qc.ec.gc.ca/faune/biodiv.

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