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 Canadian Drought Monitor (CDM) brings together Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada's drought monitoring capabilities and collaboration with external agencies (federal and provincial) to produce, through analysis and consolidation of multiple indices and indicators, an easily understood comprehensive national drought severity map and report each month. The monitor provides specific details on agricultural impacts of the current drought situation, including statistics on land area, cattle, and the number of producers impacted. The Canadian Drought Monitors are based on a five class system ranking the severity of the drought condition. The Monitor map identifies general drought areas, labelling droughts by intensity, with D1 being the least intense and D4 being the most intense. The classifications are as follows: D0 (Abnormally Dry) - represents an event that occurs once every 3-5 years; D1 (Moderate Drought) - represents an event that occurs every 5-10 years; D2 (Severe Drought) - represents an event that occurs every 10-20 years; D3 (Extreme Drought) - represents an event that occurs every 20-25 years; and D4 (Exceptional Drought) - represents an event that occurs every 50 years. D0 is not recognized as a drought classification; however, it provides a warning of areas that are currently vulnerable to drought or areas that are recovering from drought. For more information visit: https://open.canada.ca/data/en/dataset/292646cd-619f-4200-afb1-8b2c52f984a2

These agricultural capability / Limitation maps can be used at the regional level for making decisions on land improvement and farm consolidation, for developing landuse plans, and for preparing equitable land assessments. For more information, visit: http://open.canada.ca/data/en/dataset/0c113e2c-e20e-4b64-be6f-496b1be834ee

The Canadian Drought Monitor (CDM) is a composite product developed from a wide assortment of information such as the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), streamflow values, Palmer Drought Index, and drought indicators used by the agriculture, forest and water management sectors. Drought prone regions are analyzed based on precipitation, temperature, drought model index maps, and climate data and are interpreted by federal, provincial and academic scientists. Once a consensus is reached, a monthly map showing drought designations for Canada is digitized. Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada's National Agroclimate Information Service (NAIS) updates this dataset on a monthly basis, usually by the 10th of every month to correspond to the end of the previous month, and subsequent Canadian input into the larger North American Drought Monitor (NA-DM). The drought areas are classified as follows: - D0 (Abnormally Dry) - represents an event that occurs once every 3-5 years - D1 (Moderate Drought) - represents an event that occurs every 5-10 years - D2 (Severe Drought) - represents an event that occurs every 10-20 years - D3 (Extreme Drought) - represents an event that occurs every 20-25 years - D4 (Exceptional Drought) - represents an event that occurs every 50 years. For more information visit: https://open.canada.ca/data/en/dataset/292646cd-619f-4200-afb1-8b2c52f984a2

The “Oilseeds Science Sector by CCS” data was derived from the 2011 Census of Agriculture using published documentation describing the Science Sector. It was created for facilitating the geographic description, analysis, and reporting of the sector. The selection of 2011 Census of Agriculture variables was derived from the “AAFC Science and Technology Branch Science Strategy for the AgriFood Sector “Oilseed sector”” ;“At present, the strategy covers the following crop types: canola and rapeseed, mustard, soybeans (oilseed and food-grade), flax, sunflower, hemp, safflower” NOTE: The identified “hemp” and “safflower” making up part of the this sector are not included in this dataset because the data, although collected in the 2011 Census of Agriculture, was published as “Other crops” along with a number of other crops not included in this scope of this sector. For more information, visit: www.agr.gc.ca/atlas/metadata/1f4dcc5c-23d8-4b08-a98e-64c1c93f083c

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 National Ecological Framework for Canada provides a consistent, national spatial framework that allows various ecosystems to be described, monitored and reported on. It provides standard ecological units that allow different jurisdictions and disciplines to use common communication and reporting, and a common ground to report on the state of the environment and the sustainability of ecosystems in Canada. The framework was developed between 1991 and 1999 by the Ecosystems Science Directorate, Environment Canada and the Center for Land and Biological Resources Research, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. Over 100 federal and provincial agencies, non-governmental organizations and private sector companies contributed to its development. For more information, visit: http://open.canada.ca/data/en/dataset/3ef8e8a9-8d05-4fea-a8bf-7f5023d2b6e1

The Evaporative Stress Index (ESI) describes temporal anomalies in evapotranspiration (ET), highlighting areas with anomalously high or low rates of water use across the land surface. Here, ET is retrieved via energy balance using remotely sensed land-surface temperature (LST) time-change signals. LST is a fast- response variable, providing proxy information regarding rapidly evolving surface soil moisture and crop stress conditions at relatively high spatial resolution. The ESI also demonstrates capability for capturing early signals of "flash drought", brought on by extended periods of hot, dry and windy conditions leading to rapid soil moisture depletion. ESI values quantify standardized anomalies (σvalues) in the ratio of clear-sky actual-to-potential ET (fPET), derived using thermal infrared (TIR) satellite imagery from geostationary platforms. To capture a range in timescales, fPET composites are developed for 1, 2 and 3 month moving windows, advancing at 7-day intervals. Standardized anomalies are then computed with respect to normal conditions (mean and standard deviation) for each compositing interval assessed over a period of record from 2000-2015. For more information, visit: http://open.canada.ca/data/en/dataset/679f676a-330a-456f-9928-a4fafc95f9f8

The "AAFC Annual Unit Runoff in Canada - 2013" report aims to illustrate runoff trends across the country by calculating annual unit runoff for a variety of probabilities of exceedence commonly used by decision makers. Annual unit runoff is a measure of runoff volume per square kilometre. It includes a point data set for the hydrologic stations that were analyzed and seven sets of linework to show the adjusted isolines for 10%, 25%, 50%, 70%, 75%, 80%, and 90% probability of exceedence. It is an update and expansion of the work completed in the 1994 report "Annual Unit Runoff on the Canadian Prairies". For more information, visit: http://open.canada.ca/data/en/dataset/a905bafc-74b5-4ec5-b5f9-94b2e19815d0

The Canadian Drought Monitor (CDM) is a composite product developed from a wide assortment of information such as the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), streamflow values, Palmer Drought Index, and drought indicators used by the agriculture, forest and water management sectors. Drought prone regions are analyzed based on precipitation, temperature, drought model index maps, and climate data and are interpreted by federal, provincial and academic scientists. Once a consensus is reached, a monthly map showing drought designations for Canada is digitized. AAFC's National Agroclimate Information Service (NAIS) updates this dataset on a monthly basis, usually by the 10th of every month to correspond to the end of the previous month, and subsequent Canadian input into the larger North American Drought Monitor (NA-DM). For more information, visit: http://open.canada.ca/data/en/dataset/292646cd-619f-4200-afb1-8b2c52f984a2