St. Lawrence River 2021 ESI Herpetofauna Sensitivity Polygons

GL_St_Lawrence_River_2021 ESI HERP Polygons is a geospatial dataset from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Vector polygons represent sensitive biological resource data for herpetofauna in the St. Lawrence River from Lake Ontario to L'Ile-Saint-Regis Island. The data characterize wildlife sensitivity to oil spills and include associated tables on species abundance, seasonality, and life history.

Use Cases

• Modeling oil spill impact zones based on herpetofauna sensitivity polygons.
• Assessing seasonal wildlife vulnerability based on associated species seasonality data.
• Planning coastal zone management and conservation efforts based on species-specific abundance and status information.
• Integrating biological sensitivity data with shoreline habitat and human-use layers for comprehensive environmental analysis.

Strengths

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

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Data may reflect geographic bias inherent to the defined study area.

Provenance

Source

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Department of Commerce

Collection Method

Likely gathered through field surveys and biological resource assessments for the ESI program.

Time Range

2021

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-13 22:31:10.043798; freshness should be verified.

Geography

St. Lawrence River from the headwaters of Lake Ontario, northeast to the western portion of L'Ile-Saint-Regis Island (Canada).