The 2010 Plant Hardiness Zones of Canada outlines the different zones in Canada where various types of trees, shrubs and flowers will most likely survive. It is based on the average climatic conditions of each area. The first such map for North America, released by the United States Department of Agriculture in 1960, was based only on minimum winter temperatures. In 1967, Agriculture Canada scientists created a plant hardiness map using Canadian plant survival data and a wider range of climatic variables, including minimum winter temperatures, length of the frost-free period, summer rainfall, maximum temperatures, snow cover, January rainfall and maximum wind speed. Natural Resources Canada's Canadian Forest Service scientists have now updated the plant hardiness zones using the same variables and more recent climate data (1961-90). They have used modern climate mapping techniques and incorporated the effect of elevation. The new map indicates that there have been changes in the hardiness zones that are generally consistent with what is known about climate change. These changes are most pronounced in western Canada. The new hardiness map is divided into nine major zones: the harshest is 0 and the mildest is 8. Subzones (e.g., 4a or 4b, 5a or 5b) are also noted in the map legend. These subzones are most familiar to Canadian gardeners. Some significant local factors, such as micro-topography, amount of shelter and subtle local variations in snow cover, are too small to be captured on the map. Year-to-year variations in weather and gardening techniques can also have a significant impact on plant survival in any particular location. For more information see: http://open.canada.ca/data/en/dataset/50f9f293-f288-4de6-98ad-f69cf85d21ea

Topographic data for lakes within the Qu'Appelle River Valley in central Saskatchewan. This data was collected in the fall of 2008 and consists of contour lines, shorelines, spot heights, and tile index. For more information, visit: http://open.canada.ca/data/en/dataset/d838afd0-8918-42e1-acdd-8c69f9b5a7e1

The "Prairie Agricultural Landscapes (PAL)" datasets identify areas of the agricultural portions of the Canadian Prairies with similar land and water resources, land use and farming practices. They are represented by vector polygons. Based on selected attributes from the Soil Landscapes of Canada (SLC) and the 1996 Census of Agriculture, the Prairies were classified into 13 (thirteen) classes of Land Practices Group and five (5) Major Land Practices Groups. Typical attributes used to define the Land Practice Groups include: land in pasture, land in summerfallow, crop mixture, farm size and the level of chemical and fertilizer inputs. The five (5) Major Groups were devised to help better understand the relationships between the groups. For more information, visit: https://open.canada.ca/data/en/dataset/0b2303be-ef05-49a8-8082-44a3eabcfa57

The Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada's LiDAR Projects dataset was created from existing spatial data. It contains the footprints (outlines) of all the LiDAR data that is openly distributed by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. LiDAR (Light Detection And Ranging) is a method of acquiring survey points using optical remote sensing technology. The dataset indicates basic information about the location, source and properties of the data. For more information, visit: http://open.canada.ca/data/en/dataset/a760f9e0-7013-4187-9261-2e69b01edd9a

The Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada's (AAFC) Watersheds Project level series supplies a number of watershed and watershed related datasets for the Prairie Provinces. The levels are greater or smaller assemblages of hydrometric areas, or the components defining them. The Project is organized by the hydrometric gauging station which are sourced from Environment Canada, the United States and Canadian provinces. Additional stations were generated to address structural issues, like river confluences or lake inlets. Collectively, they are referred to as the gauging stations, or simply, the stations. The drainage area that each station monitors, between itself and one or more of its upstream neighbours, is called an 'incremental gross drainage area'. The incremental gross drainage areas are collected into larger or smaller groupings based on size or defined interest to generate the various 'levels'of the series. For more information, visit: http://open.canada.ca/data/en/dataset/c20d97e7-60d8-4df8-8611-4d499a796493

The 2000 Land Use (LU) map covers all areas of Canada south of 60oN at a spatial resolution of 30 metres. The LU classes follow the protocol of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and consist of: Forest, Water, Cropland, Grassland, Settlement and Otherland. The 2000 Land Use (LU) map was developed in response to a need for explicit, high-accuracy, high-resolution land use data to meet AAFC's commitments in international reporting.For more information, visit: http://open.canada.ca/data/en/dataset/b5f413d9-9acc-4ad7-b9a7-38486ed5fee7

In 2015, the Earth Observation Team of the Science and Technology Branch (STB) at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) repeated the process of generating annual crop inventory digital maps using satellite imagery to for all of Canada, in support of a national crop inventory. A Decision Tree (DT) based methodology was applied using optical (Landsat-8) and radar (RADARSAT-2) based satellite images, and having a final spatial resolution of 30m. In conjunction with satellite acquisitions, ground-truth information was provided by provincial crop insurance companies and point observations from the BC Ministry of Agriculture and our regional AAFC colleagues. For more information, visit: http://open.canada.ca/data/en/dataset/3688e7d9-7520-42bd-a3eb-8854b685fef3

The AAFC Infrastructure Flood Mapping in Saskatchewan - 50 centimetres is the LiDAR contours with an interval of 0.5m of the capture area of Saskatchewan. The contours were modeled from the ground class at a maximum vertical distance of 0.5m and a horizontal distance of 20 m. Breaklines were not used around water features therefore a uniform height of water bodies is not necessarily present if overlapping data was collected on different days. Major contours were defined every 5m and minor contours every 0.5 m. For more information, visit: http://open.canada.ca/data/en/dataset/4e964f96-1821-4214-9247-1faacda5af9c

The 1990 Land Use (LU) map covers all areas of Canada south of 60oN at a spatial resolution of 30 metres. The LU classes follow the protocol of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and consist of: Forest, Water, Cropland, Grassland, Settlement and Otherland. The 1990 Land Use (LU) map was developed in response to a need for explicit, high-accuracy, high-resolution land use data to meet AAFC's commitments in international reporting.For more information, visit: http://open.canada.ca/data/en/dataset/02202cec-b4a1-4a1d-9997-edcbaca92d41

In 2010 the Earth Observation Team of the Science and Technology Branch (STB) at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) continued the process of generating annual crop inventory digital maps using satellite imagery. Focusing on the Prairie Provinces, a Decision Tree (DT) based methodology was applied using both optical (AWiFS, Landsat-5, DMC) and radar (RADARSAT-2) based satellite imagery, and having a final spatial resolution of 56m. Methods were also developed to enhance the optical classification with RADARSAT-2 imagery, addressing issues associated with cloud cover. In conjunction with satellite acquisitions, ground-truth information was provided by provincial crop insurance companies and point observations from our regional AAFC colleagues. The overall process for Crop Inventory Map includes: satellite data acquisition; field data acquisition for classification training and accuracy assessment; and, operational implementation of the classification methodology. For more information, visit: http://open.canada.ca/data/en/dataset/6dc5170d-4167-47e4-b80a-93ed2b47f023