Lake Sturgeon Habitat Areas in the St. Lawrence River and Estuary

A geospatial dataset documents known lake sturgeon breeding, feeding, and concentration areas in the St. Lawrence River and Estuary. It was compiled by Fisheries and Oceans Canada from a literature review of documents published between 1976 and 2002. The dataset is available in SHP, ESRI REST, and CSV formats.

Use Cases

• Map and analyze the spatial distribution of lake sturgeon breeding, feeding, and concentration areas for habitat protection planning.
• Overlay habitat area polygons with other environmental datasets to assess threats from development or pollution.
• Use the documented literature sources to trace the historical evidence and methodology behind each identified habitat location.
• Validate or supplement contemporary fish survey data by comparing with these historically compiled habitat zones.

Strengths

• Compiles information from a multi-decade literature review spanning 26 years (1976-2002).
• Provides geospatial data in multiple standard formats (SHP, ESRI REST, CSV) for interoperability.
• Focuses on a specific, ecologically significant species (lake sturgeon) in a defined major river system.

Limitations

• Data is based on a historical literature review and may not reflect current habitat conditions or recent scientific findings.
• The underlying source documents are from 1976-2002, making the compiled information potentially outdated for modern ecological analysis.
• Specific quantitative details like row count, column count, and spatial precision of features are unknown.

Provenance

Source

Fisheries and Oceans Canada

Collection Method

Compilation from a literature review of scientific and governmental documents.

Time Range

Source documents cover 1976 to 2002.

Freshness

The metadata was last updated in March 2026, but the underlying source data is historical (1976-2002).

Geography

Fluvial section and Estuary of the St. Lawrence River, Canada.