Research Document - 2014/044

Assessing marine criteria for Ecologically and Biologically Significant Areas (EBSA): are the criteria interpretable and measureable in Lake Ontario?

By R.G. Randall, C.M. Boston, S.E. Doka, E.L. Gertzen, and J. Mossman

Abstract

Ecological criteria that were developed for identifying Ecologically and Biologically Significant Areas (EBSA) in marine ecosystems of Canada were assessed and judged to be useful for identifying ecologically significant areas in a freshwater ecosystem of Lake Ontario.  For assessing the criteria, metrics of habitat quality, productivity and fishes in the Bay of Quinte were compared to other areas of Lake Ontario, using available data and expert knowledge. All primary EBSA criteria, uniqueness, aggregation and fitness consequences, and the two qualifiers, naturalness and resilience, were examined and found to be relevant and interpretable. Example areas of the criteria in Lake Ontario could be supported by available scientific evidence. Each criterion was assessed in the context of ecological functions (e.g., spawning, growth and survival, refugia), or physical properties/structural features (e.g., thermal habitat, aquatic vegetation). Limitations, lessons learned and science gaps for assessing the criteria, evident from this Lake Ontario study, are discussed. For future application in the Great Lakes and elsewhere in freshwaters, additional science evaluation of the criteria is required for other habitat types and regions (e.g., fluvial habitat, northern ecosystems, areas where data are limited), and for other approaches to identify the appropriate spatial scale of ecologically significant areas (e.g., data-layering). Despite these limitations, the EBSA criteria and the underlying ecological concepts are an excellent starting point for identifying significant areas in freshwater ecosystems.

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