Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) is developing a National Land and Water Information Service (NLWIS) in partnership with other federal government departments, provincial and territorial governments, NGOs and industry groups. The service will provide land-use decision makers with the information, tools and expertise needed to make environmentally responsible land-use decisions.
The National Land and Water Information Service (NLWIS) aims to provide integrated, up-to-date and consistent land, soil, water, air, climatic and bio-diversity resource information to land-use managers to enable them to make environmentally responsible land-use decisions.
Trends toward more diverse and intensive agriculture practices present a higher risk to land, water and air resources as well as to climate and bio-diversity. Therefore, proper planning of agricultural development is essential so that Canadian land-use managers can maximize economic benefits while safeguarding environmental quality.
At the present time, the information needed to make environmentally responsible land-use decisions is either not available or is not easily accessible. NLWIS will help solve this problem by creating a single point of entry to obtain natural resource data on-line and access decision tools and experts for assistance in using the service.
NLWIS will provide a coordinated, national approach for managing, interpreting and disseminating information by strategically linking the land, soil, water, air, climatic and bio-diversity data of federal, provincial, territorial and municipal governments and non-government organizations.
The NLWIS site has example projects that demonstrate the use of geographic information systems (GIS) technology in providing land and water information to Internet users.
New Brunswick Contact(s):
See National Contact.