What is the ecological framework?
The ecological framework used in Canada describes ecologically distinct areas of the earth’s surface at different levels of generalization, ranging from the broad scale ecozones to the more detailed ecodistricts. It is based on a common system of classifying and mapping terrestrial ecosystems developed in the 1970s and 1980s by professionals from governments, non-government organizations universities and industry through the Canada Committee on Ecological Land Classification. The most recent version was prepared in 1994 and is available in hardcopy and GIS format with narrative descriptions of each ecozone and ecoregion. Although not specifically part of the ecological framework, nested within the ecodistricts are the polygons that make up the recently completed CLBRR national Soil Landscapes of Canada GIS database developed for use at the 1:1,000,000 scale. The ecological framework and the soil landscapes provide a series of seamless nested coincident map units at all four levels of g
