ABSTRACT
A framework is being developed for a national environmental-monitoring program for Canada. Two classes of monitoring sites are suggested for each of the 15 terrestrial ecozones of Canada: (1) intensive sites in protected areas such as national parks, for baseline reference and for study of functional and structural ecology, and (2) extensive sites throughout the ecozones to determine regional effects of human activities, and to gain an overview of changes in the ecological character of the landscape. The reporting of national environmental monitoring will be coordinated by the State of the Environment Reporting Organization of Environment Canada. An obvious constraint to reporting will be the coordination and interpretation of data from different agencies. Initial steps in the proposed framework are to identify the major sources of stress in particular ecozones, and deficiencies in the available environmental information. The Atlantic Maritime ecozone is used to illustrate use of the proposed framework. Most of the extensive data can be obtained from existing monitoring programs of cooperating sectoral agencies. In this region, chemical aspects of air and water are more thoroughly monitored than are biological aspects of the ecosystem. Data describing ecosystem structure and function of intensive sites are especially deficient. The lack of biological indicators of environmental quality is important, since these are the most relevant indicators of ecological integrity.
