Marine Environmental Quality (MEQ) map service (English, ESRI REST)

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Publisher-reported update

2026-03-24

PURPOSE: To quantify impacts of nutrient and sediment loading to plant and animal communities and the environmental conditions that support them in estuaries of the Southern Gulf of St. Lawrence DESCRIPTION: The MEQ monitoring program is being implemented in 35-40 estuaries in the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence (sGSL) to support the development of a MEQ measure (threshold) to promote efforts to address nutrient enrichment in estuaries. The two main indicators included in the monitoring program are dissolved oxygen and eelgrass coverage which are used to assess the trophic status of estuaries within the region. The two factors most important for impacting the trophic status of estuaries are nitrogen loading and water residence time, i.e., water circulation. If water residence time is long and/or nitrogen loading is high, nutrient impacts are likely. A peer-reviewed manuscript has demonstrated that these two factors are predictive of the dissolved oxygen regime in the upper estuary and that publication successfully used dissolved oxygen to ascribe trophic status to estuaries. In a companion paper it was also determined that nitrogen loading was negatively correlated with eelgrass…

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