Book Description

Paper presented at the International Association of Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Mayors Annual Conference in St. Catherines, Ontario, on June 17, 2003. This presentation introduces the State of the St. Lawrence Monitoring Program developed within the framework of the St. Lawrence Vision 2000 Action Plan by Environment Canada, the Ministère de l'Environnement du Québec, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, and the Société de la faune et des parcs du Québec. Drawing on the data gathered in the course of their regular environmental monitoring activities, the government partners developed a series of indicators for the main components of the St. Lawrence River ecosystem: water, sediments, biological resources, uses and, in future, the shoreline. The integration and analysis of indicator data provided an initial profile of changes in the state of the St. Lawrence River. The findings are summarized in a collection of fact sheets that were used to prepare the "Overview of the State of the St. Lawrence River".