Landcover dataset created for the northern part of Saskatchewan based on a combination of Landsat 5 Thematic Mapper (TM) and Landsat 7 Enhanced Thematic Mapper (ETM+) data representing circa 2000 conditions. Download: here It is a priority of the Saskatchewan and Canadian government to assess and monitor the health and sustainability of Canada's Forest. The North Digital Land Cover Classification (NDLC) will provide Saskatchewan's contribution to Canada's Earth Observation for Sustainable Development of Forests (EOSD) initiative, helping Canada fulfill it's obligation to the Kyoto Protocol. The NDLC supports the mission and directives of the Saskatchewan provincial government by providing an essential dataset which will enable researchers, natural resource managers and government to assess the health and sustainability of our forests, perform research in the area of climate change, manage natural resources and create policy. The NDLC will be based on a combination of Landsat 5 Thematic Mapper (TM) and Landsat 7 Enhanced Thematic Mapper (ETM+) data representing circa 2000 conditions. The NDLC is being produced through a collaboration of federal, provincial, and territorial governments, agencies and industry. Classification Value Background 0 Agriculture 1 Not Assigned 2 Pasture Upland Herbaceous Graminoid 3 Not Assigned 4 Not Assigned 5 Hardwood Open Canopy 6 Hardwood Closed Canopy 7 Jack Pine Closed Canopy 8 Jack Pine Open Canopy 9 Spruce Closed Canopy 10 Spruce Open Canopy 11 Mixed Hardwoods/Softwoods, Softwood/Hardwood Open and Closed Canopy 12 Treed Rock 13 Recent Burn 14 Revegetating/Regenerating Burn 15 Cutovers 16 Water 17 Marsh 18 Herbaceous Fen 19 Mud Sand Saline 20 Shrub Fen 21 Treed Bog 22 Open Bog 23 Not Assigned 24 Settlements/Roads 25 Barren Land 26 Mixed Softwoods Open and Closed 27 Cloud/Shadow/Haze 28 Unclassified 29 0. Background: Where pixels values are equal to 0 in all channels of satellite image data.  1. Agriculture: Cropland and agricultural clearing areas  2. Not Assigned: Empty Class  3. Pasture Upland Herbaceous Graminoid: Lands containing known pastures, tame or native grasses and herbaceous vegetation. May contain low-lying shrubs with less then 10% tree cover. 4. Not Assigned: Empty Class  5. Not Assigned: Empty Class  6. Hardwood Open Canopy: Trembling Aspen, White Birch, Balsam Poplar composes greater than 75% of species by area, Crown Closure: greater than 10% and less than or equal to 55% (SE crown closure classes A and B).  7. Hardwood Closed Canopy: Trembling Aspen, White Birch, Balsam Poplar composes greater than 75% of species by area, Crown Closure: greater than 55% (SE crown closure classes C and D).  8. Jack Pine Closed Canopy: Jack Pine composes greater than 75% of species by area, Crown Closure: greater than 55% (SE crown closure classes C and D).  9. Jack Pine Open Canopy: Jack Pine composes greater than 75% of species by area, Crown Closure: greater than 10 and less than or equal to 55% (SE crown closure classes C and D).  10. Spruce Closed Canopy: White Spruce, Black Spruce composes greater than 75% of species by area, Crown Closure: greater than 55% (SE crown closure classes C and D).  11. Spruce Open Canopy: White Spruce, Black Spruce composes greater than 75% of species by area, Crown Closure: greater than 10 and less than or equal to 55% (SE crown closure classes C and D).  12. Mixed Hardwoods/Softwoods, Softwood/Hardwood Open and Closed Canopy: An area of hardwood and softwood combinations in which neither hardwood nor softwood account for greater than 75% of species by area and where the crown closure is greater than 10%.  13. Treed Rock: Forest vegetation less than 10%.  14. Recent Burn: An area showing evidence of recent burning natural or prescribed and there is little to no regeneration or revegetation visible.  15. Revegetating/Regenerating Burn: An area showing evidence of natural or prescribed burning and where regeneration or revegetation is visible.  16. Cutovers: An area of deforestation, vegetated and non-vegetated. Ancillary data required to correctly classify due to the anthropogenic land cover/land use class.  17. Water: These areas include lakes, rivers, streams, and reservoirs.  18. Marsh: A periodically wet or continually flooded but non peat-forming area supporting grasses, sedges and reeds.  19. Herbaceous Fen: A wetland area consisting of nutrient rich water and decomposing peat supporting vascular and nonvascular plants grasses, sedges, and reeds.  20. Mud Sand Saline: Water saturated soil, salt water and sand containing no vegetation.  21. Shrub Fen: A wetland area consisting of nutrient rich water and decomposing peat supporting low shrubs, forbs, grass, moss, and a sparse tree cover.  22. Treed Bog: A wetland area consisting of decomposing peat moss, lichen and shrubs with 10% to 25% tree cover of stunted black spruce and tamarack.  23. Open Bog: A wetland area consisting of low nutrient water and decomposing peat moss, lichen, and sparse tree cover.  24. Not Assigned: Empty Class  25. Settlements/Roads: Anthropogenic land cover consisting of urban, commercial, industrial, major roads, highways, surface mines, gravel pits and spoil piles.  26. Barren Land: With the exception of the settlements and Roads class, any area of exposed rock, soil or non-vegetated land.  27. Mixed Softwoods Open and Closed: Jack Pine/Spruce, Spruce/Jack Pine Open and Closed, an area of softwood combinations in which neither Jack Pine or Spruce account for greater than 75% of species by area and where crown closure is greater than 10%.  28. Cloud/Shadow/Haze: An area of cloud, shadow, haze.  29. Unclassified: An area of unidentifiable land cover, indicates no work done/not classified, wrong information, missing data and possible new class greater than 3 pixels. 

Portions of Universal Transverse Mercator Zones 7 - 12 which cover British Columbia, Northern Hemisphere only, formed into polygons, in BC Albers projection

AAFC’s Canadian Ag-Land Monitoring System (CALMS), operational since 2009, was developed by AAFC’s Earth Observation Service (EOS) to deliver weekly NDVI-based maps of crop condition in near-real-time. The CALMS uses data collected by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectro-radiometer (MODIS), a sensor mounted onboard NASA’s Terra satellite that has been acquiring data since February 2000. The state-of-the-art radiometric, spectral and spatial resolutions of MODIS Terra make it particularly well-suited for large-scale vegetation mapping and assessment. Crop condition (NDVI) maps are generated weekly by AAFC throughout Canada’s growing season, the period defined as the six-month period stretching from the start of Julian week 12 (end of March) to the end of Julian week 44 (late October). Weeks of the year are defined according to the ISO 8601 week-numbering standard, where weeks start on a Monday and end the following Sunday. CALMS products are generated in the MODIS native Integrated Sinusoidal (ISIN) projection for the region covering the twelve MODIS tiles h09v03 to h14v03 and h09v04 to h14v04.

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.

CHS offers 500-metre bathymetric gridded data for users interested in the topography of the seafloor. This data provides seafloor depth in metres and is accessible for download as predefined areas.

Each pixel value corresponds to the best quality maximum NDVI recorded within that pixel over the week specified. Poor quality pixel observations are removed from this product. Observations whose quality is degraded by snow cover, shadow, cloud, aerosols, and/or low sensor zenith angles are removed (and are assigned a value of “missing data”). In addition, negative Max-NDVI values, occurring where R reflectance > NIR reflectance, are considered non-vegetated and assigned a value of 0. This results in a Max-NDVI product that should (mostly) contain vegetation-covered pixels. Max-NDVI values are considered high quality and span a biomass gradient ranging from 0 (no/low biomass) to 1 (high biomass).

Data represents surface water occurrence frequency (percentage), which describes the frequency for each grid appeared as water in the 30 years time period of 1991 to 2020. The data covers Canada’s entire landmass including all transboundary watersheds, and is at 30-meter spatial resolution. The surface water occurrence frequency is derived using the surface water model of Wang et al. (2023) from all-available monthly water data observed by the Landsat satellites (Pekel et al., 2016). Here, permanent waters are represented by 100%, and permanent land surfaces by 0%, of water occurrence for a 30-meter by 30-meter grid. References: Pekel, J.-F., A. Cottam, N. Gorelick, A.S. Belward, 2016, High-resolution mapping of global surface water and its long-term changes. Nature, 540, 418-422. Wang, S., J. Li, and H. A. J. Russell, 2023, Methods for Estimating Surface Water Storage Changes and Their Evaluations. Journal of Hydrometeorology, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1175/JHM-D-22-0098.1.

The ‘Circa 1995 Landcover of the Prairies’dataset is a geospatial raster data layer portraying the rudimentaryland cover types of all grain-growing areas of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and northeastern British Columbia at a 30-metre resolution for the 1995 timeframe. It is the collection of all the classified imagery (1993 to 1995) of the Western Grain Transition Payment Program (WGTPP) assembled into a single seamless raster data layer.

Index Grid for NTS 1:250,000 scale maps

Landcover dataset created for the agricultural portion of Saskatchewan. Download: here A satellite imagery classification of Southern Saskatchewan based mainly on 1994 Landsat5 imagery. Developed by the Saskatchewan Research Council after 1997. Background: A group of Provincial and Federal Agencies formed a partnership in March of 1997 to share the cost of obtaining satellite imagery and interpreting this imagery to create a landcover dataset for the agricultural portion of Saskatchewan. The partnership included Saskatchewan Research Council (SRC), Saskatchewan Agriculture and Food (SAF), Saskatchewan Crop Insurance (SCI), Saskatchewan Property Management Corporation (SPMC), Environment Canada, the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration (PFRA) and Saskatchewan Environment Resource Management (SERM). The University of Regina was also involved as an 'in kind' partner providing research services in the area of land cover classifications, accuracy assessment and data conversions. The Partnership Agreement required SRC (partner doing the bulk of data processing) to provide digital files for each of 328 1:50,000 NTS map sheets. The digital files included not only raw imagery, but also one file for each map sheet where the imagery was classified into 24 landcover types. The accuracy of this classification was to be demonstrated by SRC to be at least 90 per cent correct. In addition to the data processing done by SRC, SPMC provided the necessary positional control data (road intersection coordinates) and verified the positional accuracy of the final product. The other partners provided feedback to SRC on classification errors, which improved the overall accuracy of the final product. Classification Value No Data 0 Crop Land 1 Hay Crops (Forage) 2 Native Dominant Grass Lands 3 Tall Shrubs 4 Pasture (Seeded Grass Lands) 5 Hardwoods (Open Canopy) 6 Hardwoods (Closed Canopy) 7 Jack Pine (Closed Canopy) 8 Jack Pine (Open Canopy) 9 Spruce (Close Canopy) 10 Treed Rock 13 Recent Burns 14 Revegetating Burns 15 Cutovers 16 Water Bodies 17 Marsh 18 Herbaceous Fen 19 Mud/Sand/Saline 20 Shrub Fen (Treed Swamp) 21 Treed Bog 22 Open Bog 23 Slopes 25 Slopes 26 0. No Data 1. Crop Land - All lands dedicated to the production of annual cereal, oil seed and other specialty crops, and typically cultivated on an annual basis.  2. Hay Crops (Forage) - Alfalfa and alfalfa/tame grass mixtures.  3. Native Dominant Grass Lands - Native dominant grasslands/may contain tame grasses and herbs.  4. Tall Shrubs - Communities containing both low and tall shrub, snowberry, saskatoon, chokecherry, buffaloberry, and willow.  5. Pasture (Seeded Grass Lands) - Grassland dominated by tame grass species.  6. Hardwoods (Open Canopy) - Corresponds to Provincial Forest Inventory: over 75% hardwoods; 10-30% crown closure.  7. Hardwoods (Closed Canopy) - Corresponds to Provincial Forest Inventory: over 75% hardwoods; 30-100% crown closure.  8. Jack Pine (Closed Canopy) - Similar to Provincial Forest Inventory: 75% or greater Jack Pine; 30-100% crown closure.  9. Jack Pine (Open Canopy) - Similar to Provincial Forest Inventory: 75% or greater Jack Pine; 10-30% crown closure.  10. Spruce (Close Canopy) - Similar to Provincial Forest Inventory: 75% or greater Black and White Spruce; 10-30% crown closure. 11. Spruce: Open Canopy - Similar to Provincial Forest Inventory: 75% or greater Black and White Spruce; 10-30% crown closure. 12. Mixed Woods - All softwood/hardwood mixtures.  13. Treed Rock - Areas of exposed bedrock with generally less then 10% tree cover. Dominant species are Jack Pine and Black Spruce.  14. Recent Burns - All areas that have been recently burned over by wildfires.  15. Revegetating Burns - Burns with a regrowth of commercial timber generally 1-5 metres in height.  16. Cutovers - Areas where commercial timber has been completely or partially removed by logging operations.  17. Water Bodies - Consists of all open water - lakes, rivers, streams, ponds, and lagoons.  18. Marsh - Dominated by sedge and wetland grasses.  19. Herbaceous Fen - Fens dominated by herbaceous species.  20. Mud/Sand/Saline  21. Shrub Fen (Treed Swamp) - Fens dominated by shrubby species.  22. Treed Bog - Peat-covered or peat-filled depressions with a high water table and a surface carpet of moss, chiefly sphagnum. The bogs have 25% or more canopy by trees greater than one metre tall. The primary species is black spruce.  23. Open Bog - Peat-covered or peat-filled depressions with a high water table and a surface carpet of moss, chiefly sphagnum. 24. Farmstead - Farmstead types, towns, cities, Exposed areas with little or no vegetation or Cloud coverage.  25. Slopes - Steep Valley slopes or hill slopes where aspect and slope prohibit classification. 26. Slopes - Steep Valley slopes or hill slopes where aspect and slope prohibit classification.