St. Lawrence River 2021 ESI Habitat Polygons for Oil Spill Sensitivity

GL_St_Lawrence_River_2021 ESI HABITATS Polygons is a geospatial dataset from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. It contains vector polygons representing habitats and sensitive biological resources for threatened and endangered plants in the St. Lawrence River. The data characterizes environments by their sensitivity to oil spills and was last updated in March 2026.

Use Cases

• Modeling oil spill impact zones based on habitat sensitivity polygons.
• Assessing conservation priorities for threatened and endangered plant species based on stored biological attributes.
• Integrating habitat data with human-use resources for coastal zone management planning.

Strengths

• Data is part of a standardized Environmental Sensitivity Index (ESI) framework for oil spill planning.
• Includes associated tables with species-specific attributes like abundance and seasonality.
• Spatial coverage is clearly defined from Lake Ontario to L'Ile-Saint-Regis Island.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation and sample data are unavailable, requiring inspection after download.
• Row count and dataset size are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Primary file format is PDF, which may complicate direct geospatial analysis.

Provenance

Source

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Department of Commerce

Collection Method

Likely gathered through field surveys and remote sensing for the Environmental Sensitivity Index program.

Time Range

2021

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-13 22:29:18.029302.

Geography

St. Lawrence River from Lake Ontario headwaters to L'Ile-Saint-Regis Island (CA).