QUEBEC REGION'S SHORELINE SEGMENTATION IN THE ST. LAWRENCE RIVER: RESPONSE TOOL FOR OIL SPILL

Abstract

ABSTRACT The Quebec Region's shoreline description of the St. Lawrence River began in 1985 with the first shoreline interpretation by Environment Canada. This description was available as a paper version and was no longer adequate for oil spill response. An update was required in order to split the shoreline into segments and to digitize the information. A partnership was developed between Environment Canada, Eastern Canada Response Corporation and the Canadian Coast Guard to conduct the aerial survey and to do the segmentation. The cartography of segmentation covers the fluvial part of the St. Lawrence River (Montreal Region) up to the Gulf (including the Lower-North Shore and the St. Lawrence Islands). The database, developed specifically for that project, is oil spill-oriented. It includes geomorphologic information, from the supratidal to the lower intertidal zone, some statistical information and other requirements for the cleanup operation. For this operational database, useful for the response operation, links were developed with other databases and specialized oil spill software. The first system is GENIE Web, which is a Georeference Environmental Network for Information Exchange on the Web. The second system, ShoreAssess©, is a managing tool for SCAT teams in the field. Finally, a partnership with the Geography Department at the Université du Québec in Rimouski (UQAR) will help us to keep the St. Lawrence River coastal evolution up to date.