Regional Planning Units for the Boreal Region of Canada

Conservation planning for large areas, such as the boreal region of Canada, is facilitated by dividing the area into smaller planning units. Often, conservation planning units are defined by political boundaries (i.e., provinces, territories, resource management units, or parks) because these units have economic and administrative meaning. Pragmatically, these units are often treated in isolation with little consideration to the ecological context of the unit. As such, political units do not recognize ecological boundaries, they are often much smaller than the geographic range of species or the spatial extent over which processes operate, and thus are not ecologically defensible and can result in an inefficient selection of conservation sites with higher area requirements and disproportionate protection of the periphery of species. For these reasons and others, there has been increasing recognition for the need to incorporate ecological factors such as watersheds, climate, geology, and vegetation, to name a few, into the design of planning units. For the boreal region of Canada, we identified 15 regional planning units (RPUs) based on hydrologic flow and terrestrial composition. RPUs are delineated by the intersection of Ocean Drainages Areas (NRCAN 2008) and Ecozones (Marshall and Schut 1999). Ocean Drainage Areas are distinct hydrological units defining the area of land that directs the flow of precipitation and surface water to a particular ocean. Ecozones are generalized ecological units that are characterized by similar abiotic and biotic factors and represent the cumulative effect of ecological processes such as soil formation, nutrient cycling, photosynthesis, and population dynamics.

Marshall, I.B. and Schut, P.H. 1999. A National Ecological Framework for Canada - Overview. A cooperative product by Ecosystems Science Directorate, Environment Canada and Research Branch, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. 7 pages. http://sis.agr.gc.ca/cansis/nsdb/ecostrat/intro.html

NRCAN. 2008. Atlas of Canada, 1,000,000 National Frameworks Data, Hydrology - Drainage Areas. Natural Resources Canada, Government of Canada, Ottawa, ON.

The shapefiles used to create this coverage are listed below:

Boreal Region of Canada as defined by BEACONs - available on Data Basin

Ecozone shapefiles can be downloaded from http://sis.agr.gc.ca/cansis/nsdb/ecostrat/gis_data.html.

Ocean Drainages Areas can be downloaded from Geogratis, Atlas of Canada 1,000,000 National Frameworks Data, Hydrology Drainage Areas Version 6, ftp://ftp.geogratis.gc.ca/frameworkdata/drainage_areas/