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 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 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

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

This dataset is aligned to a grid that with a dataset of soil attributes following GlobalSoilMap standards and specifications at specified depth increments extending over the agricultural portion of Canada. The SLC map polygons were rasterized and combined with the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) 90 metre grid to create the gridded raster dataset. Weighted averages of soil attribute properties are generated from existing soil horizon information to conform to recognized fixed depth increments. Soil attribute weighted means are calculated by using all the soil components based on their areal extent in each SLC polygon. The polygonal attribute weighted mean averages are spatially represented by the grid. For more information, visit: http://open.canada.ca/data/en/dataset/cb29b370-3639-4645-9ef9-b1ef131837b7

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 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

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

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