Abstract

As part of the Census of Environment program, Statistics Canada is working to compile integrated statistics and accounts on Canada’s ecosystems, following the United Nations System of Environmental Economic Accounting (UN SEEA) framework. Monitoring the extent and condition of ecosystems, and the supply of ecosystem services over an area the size of Canada demands large volumes of spatial information.
Although urban and other built-up areas occupy less than 1% of Canada’s land, they are home to most of Canada’s population. The health and well-being of urban residents is dependent on ecosystem services: the contributions of ecosystems to the benefits that are used in economic and other human activity. Given their spatial complexity and heterogeneity, urban areas tend to require data at higher resolutions of space, time, and even thematic dimensions, to provide meaningful statistics on ecosystem extent, condition, and ecosystem services.
In order to meet the data needs of a variety of policy and statistical applications, Statistics Canada is proposing and building a Register of Ecosystem Assets as a platform for storage, integration, and analysis of large volumes of geospatial data on ecosystems in Canada.
The foundation of the Register is based on Basic Spatial Units (BSUs): a tessellation of equal-area grid cells that provide a standard spatial reference system for all data. Acting as containers for environmental and socio-economic data, these discrete units allow for implicit integration of data from multiple sources. Their discrete nature allows for efficient storage and analysis in computer platforms. To accommodate and integrate data from a variety of formats and resolutions, the grid will include hierarchically nested units of different sizes, allowing data to be stored and quickly resampled to a range of resolutions.
Within the Register, each BSU is assigned to a series of standard dissemination geographical classification, allowing for rapid aggregation of spatially explicit data to alternative units for dissemination, or integration with other non-spatially explicit data. The long-term goal is to assign BSUs to standard ecosystem types to support the rapid compilation of accounts related to extent, condition and ecosystem services, as well as other environmental statistics and profiles.
The Register is being designed and built to allow for rapid integration of environmental and socio-economic data, to address pressing policy questions around urban development and human well-being in the face of climate change and other drivers of ecosystem change.