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Internationally, the NAP Ecoregion is recognized as a Level II subdivision of the Ecological Regions of North America (Commission for Environmental Cooperation, 1997). It is also known as the Atlantic Northern Forest (Bird Conservation Planning Region 14) in the North American Bird Conservation Initiative (NABCI). The Canadian portion of the NAP Ecoregion is referred to as the Atlantic Maritime Ecozone in the National Ecological Framework for Canada (Ecological Stratification Working Group, 1996) and a province naturelle in the ecological framework for Quibec (Li and Ducruc, 1999). In the US, it is recognized as a division in the USFS Ecological Regions of the United States (Bailey, 1994) and, reflecting the CEC framework, a Level II subdivision in the USEPA Ecoregions of the Conterminous United States (Omernik et al, 1987).

Since a unified classification of the NAP Ecoregion was not available at finer scales, we created an intermediate layer to stratify, relate and integrate sub-regional classification systems across jurisdictional boundaries. The 11 cross-border sub-regions that were delineated are provisionally defined as equivalent to Canadian ecoprovinces, Quibec rigions naturelles and USFS sections. See Figure 2. The ecological units that formed these subregions were generalized from USFS sections (Bailey et al, 1994) and subsections (Keys et al, 1995) in the US. Canadian sub-regions were aggregated from provincial ecoregions, ecodistricts and ecosections in Nova Scotia (Neily et al, 2003) and New Brunswick (Ecosystem Classification Working Group, 2003) and region naturelles in Quibec (Li and Ducruc, 1999). The National Ecological Framework was used in Prince Edward Island and Nles-de-la-Madeleine.