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Mapping North American Environmental Issues
The CEC works with key mapping agency partners in Canada, Mexico, and the United States to promote understanding of significant continental-scale environmental issues through the North American Environmental Atlas.
As an initial activity, the National Atlas agencies of Canada, Mexico, and the United States – Natural Resources Canada; the National Institute of Statistics and Geography; and the U.S. Geological Survey – created harmonized base map layers of North America. These base layers of political boundaries, populated places, roads and railroads, coastlines, lakes and rivers, and other geographic features provide a consistent North American atlas framework for future collaboration.
Building on this accomplishment, CEC projects have contributed map layers for renewable energy capacity, priority conservation areas, and other environmental themes to the Atlas. The CEC is also exploring innovative mapping techniques for these map layers, including the industrial pollutant mapping tool recently released for use with Google Earth.
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Marine ecoregions |
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Watersheds |
Certain printed maps are available by request. A wall map of the major hydrological drainage basins, or watersheds, of North America is now offered. This map features the six great basins that drain into the Atlantic, Arctic, and Pacific Oceans, as well as Hudson Bay, the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea.
Further development of the North American Environmental Atlas will enable visualization of environmental topics with continental scale, enhance other CEC project work, and build collaborative networks among mapping agency partners.
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cec.org
