Canada's national ecological framework: an asset to reporting on the health of Canadian forests

The Canadian Forest Service, in cooperation with its partners, has a mandat e to report on the health of Canada's forests and determine if, how, and wh y it is changing. A holistic perspective of forest health is taken whereby the ecosystem rather than a single element is considered. The use of the na tional ecological classification of Canada as a key reporting framework fac ilitates this task. Advantages for reporting purposes are several, includin g the use of ecological over jurisdictional boundaries to discuss ecosystem s, wide national acceptance of the framework, and access to a wide array of other environmental databases that use the same framework. Compromises hav e to be made for forest health reporting as the ecological classification i s not a forest ecosystem classification. However, advantages to using the f ramework for national reporting far outweigh these shortcomings.