Ecological Land Classification

The Ecological Land Classification (ELC) is Statistics Canada's official classification for ecological areas in Canada.

The ELC was developed to enable the production of integrated statistics for ecological areas. It is a hierarchical framework that classifies ecological areas or ecosystems and that incorporates all major components of ecosystems: air, water land and biota. All boundaries in the ecological framework are matched to soil landscape polygons from the Soil Landscapes of Canada (SLC).

There are 15 ecozones at the top of the ecological land classification hierarchy. They cover the entire terrestrial extent of Canada.

These ecozones are subdivided into 53 ecoprovinces that contain 194 ecoregions, which can be further subdivided into 1,027 separate ecological units called ecodistricts.