In EffetsCumulatifsNavigation/ceanav: Research compendium for project on the assessment cumulative effects of marine vessel activities in the St. Lawrence

Areas of public interest

Protected areas

We thank Joannie Ferland from Ministère de l'Environnement, de la Lutte contre les changements climatiques, de la Faune et des Parcs for the discussions and support.

uid <- meta$dataDescription$categories$accronyme %in% 
          c("public_milieu_protege")
meta$dataDescription$categories$source[uid] %>%
sapply(., function(x) stringr::str_split(x, ",")) %>%
unlist() %>%
unique() %>%
sort() %>%
show_source(lang = "en")

The protected areas were characterized by integrating four databases. The first database corresponds to the delineation of the different spatial management measures implemented in the Saguenay-St. Lawrence Marine Park [@apc2021]. This database includes the delineation of regulatory spatial measures (e.g. no-shipping zones and slow-down zones) as well as voluntary spatial measures (e.g. slow-down zones and avoidance zones). The second database comes from the Government of Canada and delineates environments where management measures are recognized as other effective conservation measures by area [EMCEZ; @mpo2021d]. Within our study area, this database shows a single protected area upstream of the Saguenay River that limits fishing activities to protect beluga habitat and to avoid resuspension of contaminated sediments.

Finally, data from the Register of Protected Areas in Quebec (Registre des aires protégées au Québec) [@melcc2021] was used to complete the portrait. This register provides a compilation of protected areas in Quebec -- identified according to the definitions of the Natural Heritage Conservation Act (NHCA; RLRQ, chapter C-61.01) or the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) -- and territories of conservation importance -- identified by the Ministère de l'Environnement, de la Lutte contre les changements climatiques, de la Faune et des Parcs (MELCCFP) or an authority of the Quebec government. During the March 2023 update, these data were enhanced by integrating data from work carried out by the MELCCFP's ecological knowledge department, integrating an update of the Register of protected areas in Quebec and its territories of importance [@melcc2022], of the Directory of voluntary conservation sites of Quebec [@rmnp2022], of wildlife habitats [@mffp2021b] and of exceptional forest ecosystems not appearing in the Registry [@mffp2022]. We removed wildlife habitats and land reserves for protected area purposes from these databases because these categories covered the entire study area, as well as the habitats of a threatened or vulnerable plant species because that they were covered by other valued components.

knitr::include_graphics("./figures/figures-integrated/site-public_milieu_protege.png")

Heritage sites

uid <- meta$dataDescription$categories$accronyme %in% 
          c("public_sites_patrimoniaux")
meta$dataDescription$categories$source[uid] %>%
sapply(., function(x) stringr::str_split(x, ",")) %>%
unlist() %>%
unique() %>%
sort() %>%
show_source(lang = "en")

The characterization of public heritage sites comes from the integration of two databases from the Ministère de la Culture et des Communications. The first database presents data on heritage sites classified by the Minister and which are part of the heritage protected under the Cultural Heritage Act [R.S.Q., c. 21; @mcc2021]. The second database corresponds to heritage sites cited by municipalities and Indigenous communities [@mcc2021b]; these sites are also part of the heritage protected under the Cultural Heritage Act.

knitr::include_graphics("./figures/figures-integrated/site-public_sites_patrimoniaux.png")

Shipwrecks

We thank Francis Bouchard et Virginie Galindo of the Ministère de l’Environnement, de la Lutte contre les changements climatiques, de la Faune et des Parcs for the discussions and support.

uid <- meta$dataDescription$categories$accronyme %in% 
          c("public_epaves")
meta$dataDescription$categories$source[uid] %>%
sapply(., function(x) stringr::str_split(x, ",")) %>%
unlist() %>%
unique() %>%
sort() %>%
show_source(lang = "en")

Shipwrecks that are part of the archaeological heritage within the study area were characterized using data from the Ministère de l’Environnement, de la Lutte contre les changements climatiques, de la Faune et des Parcs [MELCCFP; @melccfp2023]. The data comes from a literature review on the subaquatic archaeological potential within the land reserves for the purposes of protected areas in the L'Isle-aux-Grues sector, the Kamouraska sector, the Basques sector, the Banc-des-Américains marine protected area and the proposed Manicouagan aquatic reserve carried out by AECOM [@aecom2021]. The data provided contains the potential location of wrecks within the St. Lawrence and a total of 428 wrecks are listed between Quebec and the eastern limit of the study area. Since these data are of a sensitive nature, a buffer zone of 1 km was used around each site; the resulting areas were then combined into a single layer. This layer was integrated into our 1 $km^2$ study grid in order to identify cells with subaquatic archaeological potential. This approach was used to avoid providing the specific location of known shipwrecks.

knitr::include_graphics("./figures/figures-integrated/site-public_epaves.png")

EffetsCumulatifsNavigation/ceanav documentation built on April 17, 2023, 1:02 p.m.