Surface Material by Ecoregion

The National Ecological Framework for Canada's "Surface Material by Ecoregion” dataset provides surface material information within the ecoregion framework polygon. It provides surface material codes and their English and French language descriptions as well as information about the percentage of the polygon that the component occupies.

Surface material includes the abiotic material at the earth's surface. The materials can be: ICE and SNOW - Glacial ice and permanent snow ORGANIC SOIL - Contains more than 30% organic matter as measured by weight ROCK - Rock undifferentiated MINERAL SOIL - Predominantly mineral particles: contains less than 30% organic matter as measured by weight URBAN - Urban areas. Note that only a few major urban area polygons are included on SLC source maps, therefore, do not use for tabulating total urban coverage