Pacific Marine Ecological Classification System and its Application to the Northern and Southern Shelf Bioregions

Description: Biophysical Units: Under the Pacific Marine Ecological Classification System (PMECS; DFO 2016; Rubidge et al. 2016), biophysical units are areas of distinct physiographic and oceanographic conditions and processes that shape species composition at spatial extents of 1000s of km. Geomorphic units: Geomorphic units or geozones are discrete geomorphological structures at the scale of 100s of km that are assumed to have distinctive biological assemblages (e.g., plateaus, ridges, seamounts, canyons). Although the spatial scale of geomorphic units is nested within biophysical units, a single geomorphic unit such as a trough may span more than one biophysical unit. The following 5 layers are included in this geodatabase: Biophysical_Units_L4A - Predicted PMECS Biophysical Units (Level 4A) output from the random forest analysis Biophysical_Units_L4B - Predicted PMECS Biophysical Units (Level 4B) output from the random forest analysis Biophysical_Units_ProbAssign_L4AB - Layer showing the probability that a grid cell was assigned to a given biophysical unit in the final random forest predictive modelling step Cluster_L4AB - Layer showing the output of species assemblage…

Publisher

Fisheries and Oceans Canada

Resources

13

Catalogue metadata updated

2026-03-24