This data set can be used to identify a significant ecological area, which is a polygon features that identifies an area of interest to the Ministry that is ecologically significant, and warrants special consideration, excluding ANSI's, parks, reserves, or ESA's. Different significant ecological area types collected by the Natural Resources Values Information System (NRVIS) include:

Supplementary tables can be used and are available for download from the additional documentation section. Supplementary look-up table descriptions are available in the data description document, which is available for download from the additional documentation section. This layer is part of what was known as the OMNR Non-Fundamental Dataset.