1 Background

In 2016, Fisheries and Oceans Canada renewed its research capacity to better understand the nature and extent of multiple anthropogenic stressors in the marine environment, in order to provide a foundation for policies and practices that protect the health of Canada’s oceans for future generations. This project was deemed relevant to Oceans and Climate Change science due to the need to improve understanding of how multiple drivers interact to affect the integrity of ecosystems at different temporal and spatial scales, and to improve evaluation of the vulnerability of biological communities to multiple drivers. Furthermore, marine spatial planning approaches for the use and conservation of marine resources are required, particularly in the context of fluctuating natural and human drivers. A recent project led by our team developed marine spatial planning approaches and tools to evaluate the cumulative effects of multiple environmental drivers on the ecological communities of the Estuary and Gulf of St. Lawrence in eastern Canada (Beauchesne, 2020), hereafter referred to as the St. Lawrence System.

This project identified four specific goals:

1. Evaluate the distribution and intensity of environmental drivers in the St. Lawrence System;
2. Characterize the spatial structure of the ecological communities of the St. Lawrence System;
3. Evaluate the vulnerability of ecological communities to multiple drivers;
4. Assess the cumulative effects of global changes on the ecological communities of the St. Lawrence System from the cartography of drivers (Obj. 1) and communities (Obj. 2), as well as the vulnerability of communities to multiple drivers (Obj 3).

A component of this project consisted of developing and launching the open knowledge platform eDrivers (Beauchesne et al., 2020) to facilitate the process of gathering experts committed to structuring, standardizing and sharing knowledge on drivers in support of science and management. Data on 22 coastal, climate, fisheries and marine traffic drivers were summarized through collaborations, existing environmental initiatives and open data portals. The distribution of over 200 species was modeled and predicted throughout the St. Lawrence System, a simulation approach was used to infer the vulnerability of individual species in the St. Lawrence as a function of their position in complex food webs, and a spatially explicit evaluation of cumulative effects on the ecological communities of the St. Lawrence was generated. The current project aimed to apply and further develop the approaches and tools created in the St. Lawrence System to the offshore Scotian Shelf Bioregion using a species-distribution and vulnerability mapping approach.

This project will benefit efficient, adaptive and holistic ecosystem-based management approaches that use marine spatial tools in the offshore Scotian Shelf Bioregion. Making data on drivers and ecological communities readily accessible will enhance the ability to provide efficient, consistent, and timely science guidance. This project will foster efficient and functional open science by using and further developing the fully open, transparent and replicable open knowledge platform eDrivers. This project also offers continuity and comparability between data products from the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the offshore Scotian Shelf bioregion. Comparability between ecosystems is an important aspect to support the Oceans and Climate Change Science program at DFO. Furthermore, this project creates and generates data layers that will be useful for Marine Spatial Planning purposes.