Portions of Universal Transverse Mercator Zones 7 - 12 which cover British Columbia, Northern Hemisphere only, formed into polygons, in BC Albers projection

AAFC’s Canadian Ag-Land Monitoring System (CALMS), operational since 2009, was developed by AAFC’s Earth Observation Service (EOS) to deliver weekly NDVI-based maps of crop condition in near-real-time. The CALMS uses data collected by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectro-radiometer (MODIS), a sensor mounted onboard NASA’s Terra satellite that has been acquiring data since February 2000. The state-of-the-art radiometric, spectral and spatial resolutions of MODIS Terra make it particularly well-suited for large-scale vegetation mapping and assessment. Crop condition (NDVI) maps are generated weekly by AAFC throughout Canada’s growing season, the period defined as the six-month period stretching from the start of Julian week 12 (end of March) to the end of Julian week 44 (late October). Weeks of the year are defined according to the ISO 8601 week-numbering standard, where weeks start on a Monday and end the following Sunday. CALMS products are generated in the MODIS native Integrated Sinusoidal (ISIN) projection for the region covering the twelve MODIS tiles h09v03 to h14v03 and h09v04 to h14v04.

Each pixel value corresponds to the actual number (count) of valid Best-quality Max-NDVI values used to calculate the mean weekly values for that pixel. Since 2020, the maximum number of possible observations used to create the Mean Best-Quality Max-NDVI for the 2000-2014 period is n=20. However, because data quality varies both temporally and geographically (e.g. cloud cover and snow cover in spring; cloud near large water bodies all year), the actual number (count) of observations used to create baselines can vary significantly for any given week and year.

CHS offers 500-metre bathymetric gridded data for users interested in the topography of the seafloor. This data provides seafloor depth in metres and is accessible for download as predefined areas.

Each pixel value corresponds to the best quality maximum NDVI recorded within that pixel over the week specified. Poor quality pixel observations are removed from this product. Observations whose quality is degraded by snow cover, shadow, cloud, aerosols, and/or low sensor zenith angles are removed (and are assigned a value of “missing data”). In addition, negative Max-NDVI values, occurring where R reflectance > NIR reflectance, are considered non-vegetated and assigned a value of 0. This results in a Max-NDVI product that should (mostly) contain vegetation-covered pixels. Max-NDVI values are considered high quality and span a biomass gradient ranging from 0 (no/low biomass) to 1 (high biomass).

Data represents surface water occurrence frequency (percentage), which describes the frequency for each grid appeared as water in the 30 years time period of 1991 to 2020. The data covers Canada’s entire landmass including all transboundary watersheds, and is at 30-meter spatial resolution. The surface water occurrence frequency is derived using the surface water model of Wang et al. (2023) from all-available monthly water data observed by the Landsat satellites (Pekel et al., 2016). Here, permanent waters are represented by 100%, and permanent land surfaces by 0%, of water occurrence for a 30-meter by 30-meter grid. References: Pekel, J.-F., A. Cottam, N. Gorelick, A.S. Belward, 2016, High-resolution mapping of global surface water and its long-term changes. Nature, 540, 418-422. Wang, S., J. Li, and H. A. J. Russell, 2023, Methods for Estimating Surface Water Storage Changes and Their Evaluations. Journal of Hydrometeorology, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1175/JHM-D-22-0098.1.

The ‘Circa 1995 Landcover of the Prairies’dataset is a geospatial raster data layer portraying the rudimentaryland cover types of all grain-growing areas of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and northeastern British Columbia at a 30-metre resolution for the 1995 timeframe. It is the collection of all the classified imagery (1993 to 1995) of the Western Grain Transition Payment Program (WGTPP) assembled into a single seamless raster data layer.

Index Grid for NTS 1:250,000 scale maps

Landcover dataset created for the agricultural portion of Saskatchewan. Download: here A satellite imagery classification of Southern Saskatchewan based mainly on 1994 Landsat5 imagery. Developed by the Saskatchewan Research Council after 1997. Background: A group of Provincial and Federal Agencies formed a partnership in March of 1997 to share the cost of obtaining satellite imagery and interpreting this imagery to create a landcover dataset for the agricultural portion of Saskatchewan. The partnership included Saskatchewan Research Council (SRC), Saskatchewan Agriculture and Food (SAF), Saskatchewan Crop Insurance (SCI), Saskatchewan Property Management Corporation (SPMC), Environment Canada, the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration (PFRA) and Saskatchewan Environment Resource Management (SERM). The University of Regina was also involved as an 'in kind' partner providing research services in the area of land cover classifications, accuracy assessment and data conversions. The Partnership Agreement required SRC (partner doing the bulk of data processing) to provide digital files for each of 328 1:50,000 NTS map sheets. The digital files included not only raw imagery, but also one file for each map sheet where the imagery was classified into 24 landcover types. The accuracy of this classification was to be demonstrated by SRC to be at least 90 per cent correct. In addition to the data processing done by SRC, SPMC provided the necessary positional control data (road intersection coordinates) and verified the positional accuracy of the final product. The other partners provided feedback to SRC on classification errors, which improved the overall accuracy of the final product. Classification Value No Data 0 Crop Land 1 Hay Crops (Forage) 2 Native Dominant Grass Lands 3 Tall Shrubs 4 Pasture (Seeded Grass Lands) 5 Hardwoods (Open Canopy) 6 Hardwoods (Closed Canopy) 7 Jack Pine (Closed Canopy) 8 Jack Pine (Open Canopy) 9 Spruce (Close Canopy) 10 Treed Rock 13 Recent Burns 14 Revegetating Burns 15 Cutovers 16 Water Bodies 17 Marsh 18 Herbaceous Fen 19 Mud/Sand/Saline 20 Shrub Fen (Treed Swamp) 21 Treed Bog 22 Open Bog 23 Slopes 25 Slopes 26 0. No Data 1. Crop Land - All lands dedicated to the production of annual cereal, oil seed and other specialty crops, and typically cultivated on an annual basis.  2. Hay Crops (Forage) - Alfalfa and alfalfa/tame grass mixtures.  3. Native Dominant Grass Lands - Native dominant grasslands/may contain tame grasses and herbs.  4. Tall Shrubs - Communities containing both low and tall shrub, snowberry, saskatoon, chokecherry, buffaloberry, and willow.  5. Pasture (Seeded Grass Lands) - Grassland dominated by tame grass species.  6. Hardwoods (Open Canopy) - Corresponds to Provincial Forest Inventory: over 75% hardwoods; 10-30% crown closure.  7. Hardwoods (Closed Canopy) - Corresponds to Provincial Forest Inventory: over 75% hardwoods; 30-100% crown closure.  8. Jack Pine (Closed Canopy) - Similar to Provincial Forest Inventory: 75% or greater Jack Pine; 30-100% crown closure.  9. Jack Pine (Open Canopy) - Similar to Provincial Forest Inventory: 75% or greater Jack Pine; 10-30% crown closure.  10. Spruce (Close Canopy) - Similar to Provincial Forest Inventory: 75% or greater Black and White Spruce; 10-30% crown closure. 11. Spruce: Open Canopy - Similar to Provincial Forest Inventory: 75% or greater Black and White Spruce; 10-30% crown closure. 12. Mixed Woods - All softwood/hardwood mixtures.  13. Treed Rock - Areas of exposed bedrock with generally less then 10% tree cover. Dominant species are Jack Pine and Black Spruce.  14. Recent Burns - All areas that have been recently burned over by wildfires.  15. Revegetating Burns - Burns with a regrowth of commercial timber generally 1-5 metres in height.  16. Cutovers - Areas where commercial timber has been completely or partially removed by logging operations.  17. Water Bodies - Consists of all open water - lakes, rivers, streams, ponds, and lagoons.  18. Marsh - Dominated by sedge and wetland grasses.  19. Herbaceous Fen - Fens dominated by herbaceous species.  20. Mud/Sand/Saline  21. Shrub Fen (Treed Swamp) - Fens dominated by shrubby species.  22. Treed Bog - Peat-covered or peat-filled depressions with a high water table and a surface carpet of moss, chiefly sphagnum. The bogs have 25% or more canopy by trees greater than one metre tall. The primary species is black spruce.  23. Open Bog - Peat-covered or peat-filled depressions with a high water table and a surface carpet of moss, chiefly sphagnum. 24. Farmstead - Farmstead types, towns, cities, Exposed areas with little or no vegetation or Cloud coverage.  25. Slopes - Steep Valley slopes or hill slopes where aspect and slope prohibit classification. 26. Slopes - Steep Valley slopes or hill slopes where aspect and slope prohibit classification.

The 2000 AAFC Land Use is a culmination and curated metaanalysis of several high-quality spatial datasets produced between 1990 and 2021 using a variety of methods by teams of researchers as techniques and capabilities have evolved. The information from the input datasets was consolidated and embedded within each 30m x 30m pixel to create consolidated pixel histories, resulting in thousands of unique combinations of evidence ready for careful consideration. Informed by many sources of high-quality evidence and visual observation of imagery in Google Earth, we apply an incremental strategy to develop a coherent best current understanding of what has happened in each pixel through the time series.