Biosphere Designation

The Frontenac Axis or Arch is a 50-mile wide ridge stretching from the Canadian Shield into New York's Adirondacks. The crest of the arch, created 500 million years ago, is the 1000 Islands.

It would make this area the 11th in Canada to hold the special designation and the third in Ontario, next to the Niagara Escarpment and Long Point on Lake Erie.

A project undertaken with Parks Canada, The Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, among others, with the use of satellite maps will identify natural wildlife and plant corridors coming up from the Thousand Islands northward.

With the use of GIS technology the maps can be analyzed and then layered to provide valuable information to municipal planners. Disseminated to private landowners the information can help them contribute to filling in a piece of the puzzle through habitat restoration.

"The whole purpose of analysis is to figure out how important an area is. It used to be more subjective, less quantified because it was hard to stand back far enough to see the whole picture at once," said Don Ross, a biologist working on the project.