Canada's National Ecological Framework: An asset to reporting on the health of Canadian forests

Abstract

The Canadian Forest Service, in cooperation with its partners, has a mandate to report on the health of Canada's forests and determine if, how, and why it is changing. A holistic perspective of forest health is taken whereby the ecosystem rather than a single element is considered. The use of the national ecological classification of Canada as a key reporting framework facilitates this task. Advantages for reporting purposes are several, including the use of ecological over jurisdictional boundaries to discuss ecosystems, wide national acceptance of the framework, and access to a wide array of other environmental databases that use the same framework. Compromises have to be made for forest health reporting as the ecological classification is not a forest ecosystem classification. However, advantages to using the framework for national reporting far outweigh these shortcomings. Key words: ecological land classification, forest health, national and international reporting