Foreword

The enormous diversity that used to characterize agriculture in Quebec has gradually given way to more specialized agricultural practices favouring large-scale production. These changes have resulted in the disappearance of an extremely large proportion of farm woodlands in southern Québec.

There is increasing evidence nowadays that woodlands played important ecological and agronomic roles within the ecosystem and were essential to the conservation of indigenous animal and plants species in farmland. It is imperative, therefore, that we promote conservation of remaining woodland fragments, especially in those parts of Québec where there has been.

Mindful of how important it now is to maintain biodiversity in these agro-ecosystems, Environment Canada’s Canadian Wildlife Service has, over the past few years, put together the Conservation Atlas of Woodlands in the Agricultural Landscape (Atlas). Its primary goal is to describe the state of woodlands and forest fragmentation in southern Québec. As birds are the form of wildlife at greatest risk from landscape fragmentation, the Atlas drew on existing knowledge about the way birds use this type of habitat to complement existing information about the presence of specific wildlife and plant species in woodlands. One section of the Atlas focusses on identifying which woodlands should be preserved within a given area. Since it is also intended to be a tool for synthesizing information, the Atlas contains complementary links to scientific studies and teaching guides, such as Greenways in the Québec Agricultural Landscape, (for more information, see Fondation Les Oiseleurs du Québec Inc. *) that can be used to identify habitats that can act as eco-corridors for a number of wildlife and plant species in sectors badly affected by woodland fragmentation.

The Atlas, therefore, consists of a number of sections, and users can consult these consecutively or go straight to the section they want to look at. As with The Report on Habitat and Land Use in the St. Lawrence Valley, which describes the distribution of habitats in the St. Lawrence Valley, the maps contained in the Conservation Atlas of Woodlands can be ordered free of charge by users (order form). They can then be added to existing geographic information systems, for example. Ready-to-print graphic files of the maps are also available.

The reference for this document is: Bélanger, L., M. Grenier, S. Deslandes and D. Bossé, 1998. Conservation Atlas of Woodlands in the Agricultural Landscape. Environment Canada, Canadian Wildlife Service. Internet site: www.qc.ec.gc.ca/faune/atlas/atlas.html.

* Links to sites external to Environment Canada (EC) are provided as a convenience and their inclusion in no way implies that Environment Canada endorses or accepts any responsibility for the content or use of these sites. As the organizations that maintain these sites may not be subject to the Official Languages Act, information found on these sites may be presented only in the language in which it was written.

|  Contact us |  Help |  Search |  Canada Site |
| What’s New? | About Us | Your Environment | Information and Publications | Weather | Home |
| Issues | Objectives | Methodology | Situation | Conservation | Conclusion | References | | Organisms | Order |