IBL - Imagery, basemaps, and land cover (imageryBaseMapsEarthCover) Basemaps. For example, resources describing land cover, topographic maps, and classified and unclassified images

The Grassland Inventory provides a standardized, high-resolution land cover classification for the grassland ecosystems in Canada. Developed using a random forest classification on multi-temporal Sentinel-1 SAR and Sentinel-2 Optical imagery, the series differentiates intact native grasslands from high-disturbance, tame perennial forage systems; two classes that are spectrally and phenologically similar, yet critical to differentiate and quantify accurately for carbon and biodiversity modelling. Each release in the series includes a categorical 10 m land cover raster and a companion continuous likelihood layer representing model confidence in the native grassland class. As new classifications are added (semi-decadal) and geographic extent increased, the series will enable consistent temporal comparisons to track grassland dynamics and land cover change to support operational and research applications within AAFC and stakeholders.

FCOVER corresponds to the amount of the ground surface that is covered by vegetation, including the understory, when viewed vertically (from nadir). FCOVER is an indicator of the spatial extent of vegetation independent of land cover class. It is a dimensionless quantity that varies from 0 to 1, and as an intrinsic property of the canopy, is not dependent on satellite observation conditions.This product consists of FCOVER indicator during peak-season (June-July-August) at 100m resolution covering Canada's land mass.

Since 1988, the governments of Canada and Quebec have been working together to conserve, restore, protect and develop the St. Lawrence River under the St. Lawrence Action Plan (SLAP). One of the projects identified under the theme of biodiversity conservation is the development of an integrated plan for the conservation of the natural environments and biodiversity of the St. Lawrence River. The identification of priority sites for conservation has been the first step of this planning exercise. Conservation planning of natural environments requires a reliable, accurate and up-to-date image of the spatial distribution of ecosystems in the study area. In order to produce an Atlas of Priority Sites for Conservation in the St. Lawrence Lowlands, an updated cartography of the land cover of this vast territory was undertaken. This project required obtaining reliable information on the natural environments of the St. Lawrence Lowlands. Although several land cover mapping projects have been conducted for specific types of habitats, it was particularly important to obtain a homogeneous product that would cover the entire territory and that would provide the most detailed information on its various thematic components: agricultural, aquatic, human-modified and forest environments, wetlands as well as old fields and bare ground. The methodology used to produce the land cover mapping of the St. Lawrence Lowlands thus relied mainly on combining and enhancing the best existing products for each theme. This project was made in collaboration with MDDELCC as part of the St. Lawrence Action Plan (SLAP).

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.

Röð uppréttra loftmynda úr loftmyndasafni Náttúrufræðistofnunar sem unnar voru á árunum 2013 til 2018 hjá Jarðvísindastofnun HÍ, sem partur af tveimur verkefnum: 1 - Mælingar á jöklabreytingum úr sögulegum loftmyndum. Þetta verkefni var unnið af Joaquín M.C. Belart í M.Sc. og Ph.D. hjá Jarðvísindastofnun. Útvaldar loftmyndir frá 1945 til 1994 voru skannaðar hjá Landmælingum Íslands sérstaklega fyrir þetta verkefni. Vinnsla þessara loftmynda fór fram með því að nota "Ground Control Points" (GCP) sem teknir voru úr lidarmælingum á íslenskum jöklum. Úrvinnsla gagna úr Drangajökli fór fram með ERDAS hugbúnaðinum. Nánari upplýsingar um vinnsluna er að finna í Magnússon o.fl., 2016 (https://tc.copernicus.org/articles/10/159/2016/tc-10-159-2016.html). Úrvinnsla gagna frá öðrum jöklum var unnin með MicMac hugbúnaðinum, einnig með GCP teknir af lidar. Nánari upplýsingar um vinnsluna eru fáanlegar í Belart o.fl., 2019 (https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-glaciology/article/geodetic-mass-balance-of-eyjafjallajokull-ice-cap -for-19452014-processing-guidelines-and-relation-to-climate/9B715A9E0413A6345C2B151B1173E71D) og Belart o.fl., 2020 (https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.31630/feart/full.316390/feart. 2 - Mælingar á hraunmagni Heklugosanna á 20. öld. Þetta verkefni var unnið af Gro B.M. Pedersen sem hluti af verkefni þar sem unnið var að umhverfiskortlagningu og vöktun Íslands með fjarkönnun "Environmental Mapping and Monitoring of Iceland by Remote Sensing" (EMMIRS, fjármagnað af Rannís) á árunum 2015-2018. Loftmyndirnar af Heklu frá 1945 til 1992 voru skannaðar af Landmælingum Íslands. Vinnsla þessara mynda var gerð með ERDAS hugbúnaðinum og nánari upplýsingar um vinnsluna er hægt að nálgast í Pedersen o.fl., 2018 (https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/2017GL076887) --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A series of orthomosaics using the archives of aerial photographs from Náttúrufræðistofnun (Loftmyndasafn) created between 2013 and 2018 at the Institute of Earth Sciences, as part of two projects: 1 - Measurements of glacier changes from historical aerial photographs. This project was conducted by Joaquín M.C. Belart during his M.Sc. and his Ph.D. at the Institute of Earth Sciences. A selection of aerial photographs from 1945 to 1994 were scanned at Náttúrufræðistofnun specifically for this project. The processing of these aerial photographs was done using Ground Control Points (GCPs) extracted from lidar surveys of Icelandic glaciers. The processing of the data from Drangajökull ice cap was done using the ERDAS software. Further details on the processing are available in Magnússon et al., 2016 (https://tc.copernicus.org/articles/10/159/2016/tc-10-159-2016.html). The processing of the data from other glaciers was done using the MicMac software, also with GCPs extracted from lidar. Further details of the processing are available in Belart et al., 2019 (https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-glaciology/article/geodetic-mass-balance-of-eyjafjallajokull-ice-cap-for-19452014-processing-guidelines-and-relation-to-climate/9B715A9E0413A6345C2B151B1173E71D) and Belart et al., 2020 (https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/feart.2020.00163/full) 2 - Measurements of the lava volumes of the Hekla eruptions in the 20th century. This project was conducted by Gro B.M. Pedersen as part of the Environmental Mapping and Monitoring of Iceland by Remote Sensing (EMMIRS, financed by Rannís) project between 2015-2018. The aerial photographs of Hekla from 1945 to 1992 were scanned by Náttúrufræðistofnun. The processing of these photographs was done using the ERDAS software, and further details of the processing are available in Pedersen et al., 2018 (https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/2017GL076887) References: Belart J.M.C., Magnússon E., Berthier E., Pálsson, F., Aðalgeirsdóttir, G., & Jóhannesson, T. (2019). The geodetic mass balance of Eyjafjallajökull ice cap for 1945–2014: Processing guidelines and relation to climate. Journal of Glaciology, 65(251), 395-409. doi:10.1017/jog.2019.16 Belart J.M.C., Magnússon E., Berthier E., Gunnlaugsson Á.Þ., Pálsson F., Aðalgeirsdóttir G., Jóhannesson T, Thorsteinsson T and Björnsson H (2020) Mass Balance of 14 Icelandic Glaciers, 1945–2017: Spatial Variations and Links With Climate. Front. Earth Sci. 8:163. doi: 10.3389/feart.2020.00163 Magnússon, E., Belart, J.M.C., Pálsson, F., Ágústsson, H., and Crochet, P.: Geodetic mass balance record with rigorous uncertainty estimates deduced from aerial photographs and lidar data – Case study from Drangajökull ice cap, NW Iceland, The Cryosphere, 10, 159–177, https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-10-159-2016, 2016. Pedersen, G. B. M., Belart, J. M. C., Magnússon, E., Vilmundardóttir, O. K., Kizel, F., Sigurmundsson, F. S., et al. (2018). Hekla volcano, Iceland, in the 20th century: Lava volumes, production rates, and effusion rates. Geophysical Research Letters, 45, 1805–1813. https://doi.org/10.1002/2017GL076887

Organic soils in the boreal forest commonly store as much carbon as the vegetation above ground. While recent efforts through the National Forest Inventory has yielded new spatial datasets of forest structure across the vast area of Canada’s boreal forest, organic soils are poorly mapped. In this geospatial dataset, we produce a map primarily of forested and treed peatlands, those with more than 40 cm of peat accumulation and over 10% tree canopy cover. National Forest Inventory ground plots were used to identify the range of forest structure that corresponds to the presence of over 40 cm of peat soils. Areas containing that range of forest cover were identified using the National Forest Inventory k-NN forest structure maps and assigned a probability (0-100% as integer) of being a forested or treed peatland according to a statistical model. While this mapping product captures the distribution of forested and treed peatlands at a 250 m resolution, open, completely treeless peatlands are not fully captured by this mapping product as forest cover information was used to create the maps. The methodology used in the creation of this product is described in: Thompson DK, Simpson BN, Beaudoin A. 2016. Using forest structure to predict the distribution of treed boreal peatlands in Canada. Forest Ecology and Management, 372, 19-27. https://cfs.nrcan.gc.ca/publications?id=36751 This distribution uses an updated forest attribute layer current to 2011 from: Beaudoin A, Bernier PY, Villemaire P, Guindon L, Guo XJ. 2017. Species composition, forest properties and land cover types across Canada’s forests at 250m resolution for 2001 and 2011. Natural Resources Canada, Canadian Forest Service, Laurentian Forestry Centre, Quebec, Canada. https://doi.org/10.23687/ec9e2659-1c29-4ddb-87a2-6aced147a990 Additionally, this distribution varies slightly from the original published in 2016 in that here slope data is derived from the CDEM: https://open.canada.ca/data/en/dataset/7f245e4d-76c2-4caa-951a-45d1d2051333 The above peatland probability map was further processed to delineate bogs vs fens (based on mapped Larix content via the k-NN maps), as well as an approximation of the extent of open peatlands using EOSD data. The result is a 9-type peatland map with a more complete methodology as detailed in: Webster, K. L., Bhatti, J. S., Thompson, D. K., Nelson, S. A., Shaw, C. H., Bona, K. A., Hayne, S. L., & Kurz, W. A. (2018). Spatially-integrated estimates of net ecosystem exchange and methane fluxes from Canadian peatlands. Carbon Balance and Management, 13(1), 16. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13021-018-0105-5 In plain text, the legend for the 9-class map is as follows: value="0" label="not peat" alpha="0" value="1" label="Open Bog" alpha="255" color="#0a4b32" value="2" label="Open Poor Fen" alpha="255" color="#5c5430" value="3" label="Open Rich Fen" alpha="255" color="#792652" value="4" label="Treed Bog" alpha="255" color="#6a917b" value="5" label="Treed Poor Fen" alpha="255" color="#aba476" value="6" label="Treed Rich Fen" alpha="255" color="#af7a8f" value="7" label="Forested Bog" alpha="255" color="#aad7bf" value="8" label="Forested Poor Fen" alpha="255" color="#fbfabc" value="9" label="Forested Rich Fen" alpha="255" color="#ffb6db" This colour scale is given in qml/xml format in the resources below. The 9-type peatland map from Webster et al 2018 was further refined slightly following two simple conditions: (1) any 250-m raster cell with greater than 40% pine content is classified as upland (non-peat); (2) all 250-m raster cells classified as water or agriculture via the NRCan North American Land Cover Monitoring System (https://doi.org/10.3390/rs9111098) is also classified as non-peatland (value of zero in the 9-class map. This mapping scheme was used at a regional scale in the following paper: Thompson, D. K., Simpson, B. N., Whitman, E., Barber, Q. E., & Parisien, M.-A. (2019). Peatland Hydrological Dynamics as A Driver of Landscape Connectivity and Fire Activity in the Boreal Plain of Canada. Forests, 10(7), 534. https://doi.org/10.3390/f10070534 And is reproduced here at a national scale. Note that this mapping product does not fully capture all permafrost peatland features covered by open canopy spruce woodland with lichen ground cover. Nor are treeless peatlands near the northern treeline captured in the training data, resulting in unknown mapping quality in those regions.

The Canada Centre for Mapping and Earth Observation (CCMEO) has created a 30m resolution radar mosaic of Canada's landmass from the RADARSAT Constellation Mission (RCM). This product highlights different types of radar interaction with the surface, which can assist the interpretation and study of land cover on a national scale. The national mosaic is made up of 3222 RCM images acquired between August 2023 and February 2024. (Credit: RADARSAT Constellation Mission imagery © Government of Canada [2024]. RADARSAT is an official mark of the CSA.)

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.