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Distribution of peatlands in Canada using National Forest Inventory forest structure and ancillary land cover data (2011)

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.

Simple

Date ( RI_367 )
2020-10-29
Date ( RI_366 )
2020-10-29
Edition
1.5
RI_418
  Government of Canada; Natural Resources Canada; Canadian Forest Service - Daniel Thompson ( Forest Fire Research Scientist )
1219 Queen St East , Sault Ste Marie , Alberta , P6A 2E5 , Canada
Presentation form
mapDigital;carteNumérique RI_391
Purpose
The purpose of this geospatial dataset to to leverage existing data on forest structure in order to provide a derivative product that maps the areas of Canada's forest that are most likely to contain treed and forested peatlands. The maps may be used in forest, wildlife, or wildfire management, amongst many other potential uses.
Status
completed; complété RI_593
Maintenance and update frequency
asNeeded; auBesoin RI_540
Keywords ( RI_528 )
  • peatland
  • forest structure maps
  • soil carbon
  • forest attributes maps of Canada
  • kNN (k nearest neighbor) maps
  • NFI forest attributes maps
Government of Canada Core Subject Thesaurus Thésaurus des sujets de base du gouvernement du Canada ( RI_528 )
  • Soil
  • Wetlands
  • Forest management
  • Geographical maps
  • Geographic data
  • Geographic information systems
Use limitation
The resolution and accuracy of these map products are best suited for strategic-level forest reporting and informing policy and decision making at local, regional to national scales. At the local scale, attribute values should be aggregated (averaged) over a minimal contiguous area of 1 km2 to increase the estimate accuracy. It is also possible to overlay these maps with other maps produced on the same pixel grid to make assessments of disturbance impacts, such as fire and harvests. Note that these maps in way are a legal demarcation of environmentally sensitive areas or watercourses, and should not be used for site-level assessments.
Use limitation
Open Government Licence - Canada (http://open.canada.ca/en/open-government-licence-canada)
Access constraints
license; licence RI_606
Use constraints
license; licence RI_606
Spatial representation type
grid; grille RI_636
Distance
250  http://standards.iso.org/ittf/PubliclyAvailableStandards/ISO_19139_Schemas/resources/uom/gmxUom.xml#m
Metadata language
eng
Metadata language
fra
Character set
utf8; utf8 RI_458
Topic category
  • Imagery base maps earth cover
Environment description
R (yaImpute, rGdal, raster), utilitaires et librairies GDAL, kNNmapping (implémentation de kNN utilisant les librairies GDAL)
Description
national coverage of forested areas at 250m resolution
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Begin date
2011-09-30
End date
2011-09-30
Reference system identifier
http://www.epsg-registry.org / EPSG:3978 /

Spatial representation info

No information provided.
Distribution format
  • GeoTIF ( not applicable )

RI_412
  Government of Canada;Natural Resources Canada;Canadian Forest Service - Daniel Thompson ( Forest Fire Research Scientist )
OnLine resource
Classified Peatland Map ( HTTP )

Dataset;TIFF;zxx

OnLine resource
Peatland Probability ( HTTP )

Dataset;AVI;zxx

OnLine resource
Thompson et al 2016 ( HTTP )

Supporting Document;PDF;eng

OnLine resource
Peat Classification colour scheme (xml/qml format) ( HTTP )

Supporting Document;other;eng

OnLine resource
Webster et al 2018 ( HTTP )

Supporting Document;PDF;eng

File identifier
62d63169-7739-4515-9178-8f628c32a9d4 XML
Metadata language
eng; CAN
Character set
utf8; utf8 RI_458
Hierarchy level
dataset; jeuDonnées RI_622
Date stamp
2020-11-25T14:41:02
Metadata standard name
North American Profile of ISO 19115:2003 - Geographic information - Metadata
Metadata standard version
CAN/CGSB-171.100-2009
RI_418
  Government of Canada; Natural Resources Canada; Canadian Forest Service - Daniel Thompson ( Forest Fire Research Scientist )
1219 Queen St East , Sault Ste Marie , Alberta , P6A 2E5 , Canada
http://cfs.nrcan.gc.ca/publications?id=36751
 
 

Overviews

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Spatial extent

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Keywords


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