The 0.34 cm resolution orthomosaic was created from unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) imagery acquired from a single day survey, July 28th 2016, in Cambridge Bay, Nunavut. Five control points taken from a Global Differential Positioning System were positioned in the corners and the center of the vegetation survey. The orthomosaic covering 525m2 was produced by Canada Centre for Remote Sensing /Canada Centre for Mapping and Earth Observation. The UAV survey was completed in collaboration with the Canadian High Arctic Research Station (CHARS) for northern vegetation monitoring research. For more information, refer to our current Arctic vegetation research: Fraser et al; "UAV photogrammetry for mapping vegetation in the low-Arctic" Arctic Science, 2016, 2(3): 79-102. http://www.nrcresearchpress.com/doi/abs/10.1139/AS-2016-0008.

The MODIS surface albedo dataset was produced by the Canada Center for Remote Sensing (CCRS), Natural Resources Canada. The dataset represents the solar shortwave broadband surface albedo and it is at a 10-day interval covering the entire Canadian landmass as well as northern USA, Alaska, and the Greenland. The dataset was derived from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) onboard the TERRA satellite which provides a global coverage every 1-2 days in 36 spectral bands ranging from visible to infrared and to thermal wavelengths between 405 and 14,385 nm, and was available since 2000. For the estimation of surface albedo, the first seven spectral bands of B1 to B7 ranging from 459 nm to 2155 nm were used. B1 and B2 have a 250 meter resolution and B3 to B7 have a 500 meter resolution. A downscaling method using a regression and normalization scheme was employed to downscale the bands B3 to B7 to 250 meter resolution while preserving radiometric properties of the original data. To obtain clear-sky observations from MODIS, composite images for a 10 day period were generated by using a series of advanced algorithms (Luo et al., 2008). The 10-day composites of B1-B7 reflectance were then used to retrieve spatially continuous spectral albedo by using a combined land/snow BRDF (Bi-directional Reflectance Distribution Function) model. In that method, the modified RossThick-LiSparse BRDF model (Maignan et al., 2004) for land and Kokhanovsky and Zege’s model (2004) for snow are linearly combined for mixed surface conditions. They are weighted by snow fraction (0.0 ~ 1.0). The seven spectral albedo were then converted into the shortwave broadband surface albedo using the empirical MODIS polynomial conversion equation of Liang et al. (1999). The data product is in LCC (Lambert Conformal Conic) projection with a 250m pixel resolution. There are 36 albedo images per year. A dataset representing the pixel state (e.g. cloud/shadow, snow/ice, water, land, et al.) was also generated for each 10-day corresponding to the surface albedo product. References: Kokhanovsky, A. A. and Zege, E. P., 2004, Scattering Optics of Snow, Applied Optics, 43, 1589-1602, doi:10.1364/AO.43.001589, 20. Liang, S., Strahler, A.H., Walthall, C., 1999. Retrieval of land surface albedo from satellite observations: a simulation study. J. Appl. Meteorol. 38, 712–725. Luo, Y., Trishchenko, A.P., Khlopenkov, K.V., 2008. Developing clear-sky, cloud and cloud shadow mask for producing clear-sky composites at 250-meter spatial resolution for the seven MODIS land bands over Canada and North America. Remote Sens. Environ. 112, 4167–4185. Maignan, F., F.M. Bréon and R. Lacaze, 2004, Bidirectional reflectance of Earth targets : evaluation of analytical models using a large set of spaceborne measurements with emphasis with the hot spot, Remote Sens. Environ., 90, 210-220.

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. 

Data include a collection of annual land cover maps derived from MODIS 250 m spatial resolution remotely sensed imagery for the period 2000 to 2011. Processing of the time series was designed to reduce the occurrence of false change between maps. The method was based on change updating as described in Pouliot et al. (2011, 2013). Change detection accounted for both abrupt changes such as forest harvesting and more gradual changes such as recurrent insect defoliation. To determine the new label for a pixel identified as change, an evidential reasoning approach was used to combine spectral and contextual information. The 2005 MODIS land cover of Canada at 250 m spatial resolution described in Latifovic et al. (2012) was used as the base map. It contains 39 land cover classes, which for time series development was considered too detailed and was reduced to 25 and 19 class versions. The 19 class version corresponds to the North America Land Change Monitoring System (NALCMS) Level 2 legend as described in Latifovic et al. (2012). Accuracy assessment of time series is difficult due to the need to assess many maps. For areas of change in the time series accuracy was found to be 70% based on the 19 class thematic legend. This time series captures the spatial distribution of dominant land cover transitions. It is intended for use in modeling, development of remote sensing products such as leaf area index or land cover based albedo retrievals, and other exploratory analysis. It is not appropriate for use in any rigorous reporting or inventory assessments due to the accuracy of the land cover classification and uncertainty as to the capture of all relevant changes for an application. NOTE: To see this entire product in the map viewer, use a base map in the "World" section (EPSG: 3857).

The 2015 AAFC Land Use is a culmination and curated metaanalysis of several high-quality spatial datasets produced between 1990 and 2021 using a variety of methods by teams of researchers as techniques and capabilities have evolved. The information from the input datasets was consolidated and embedded within each 30m x 30m pixel to create consolidated pixel histories, resulting in thousands of unique combinations of evidence ready for careful consideration. Informed by many sources of high-quality evidence and visual observation of imagery in Google Earth, we apply an incremental strategy to develop a coherent best current understanding of what has happened in each pixel through the time series.

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.

This data publication contains two collections of raster maps of forest attributes across Canada, the first collection for year 2001, and the second for year 2011. The 2001 collection is actually an improved version of an earlier set of maps produced also for year 2001 (Beaudoin et al 2014, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1139/cjfr-2013-0401) that is itself available through the web site “http://nfi-nfis.org”. Each collection contains 93 maps of forest attributes: four land cover classes, 11 continuous stand-level structure variables such as age, volume, biomass and height, and 78 continuous values of percent composition for tree species or genus. The mapping was done at a spatial resolution of 250m along the MODIS grid. Briefly the method uses forest polygon information from the first version of photoplots database from Canada’s National Forest Inventory as reference data, and the non-parametric k-nearest neighbors procedure (kNN) to create the raster maps of forest attributes. The approach uses a set of 20 predictive variables that include MODIS spectral reflectance data, as well as topographic and climate data. Estimates are carried out on target pixels across all Canada treed landmass that are stratified as either forest or non-forest with 25% forest cover used as a threshold. Forest cover information was extracted from the global forest cover product of Hansen et al (2013) (DOI: https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1244693). The mapping methodology and resultant datasets were intended to address the discontinuities across provincial borders created by their large differences in forest inventory standards. Analysis of residuals has failed to reveal residual discontinuities across provincial boundaries in the current raster dataset, meaning that our goal of providing discontinuity-free maps has been reached. The dataset was developed specifically to address strategic issues related to phenomena that span multiple provinces such as fire risk, insect spread and drought. In addition, the use of the kNN approach results in the maintenance of a realistic covariance structure among the different variable maps, an important property when the data are extracted to be used in models of ecosystem processes. For example, within each pixel, the composition values of all tree species add to 100%. * Details on the product development and validation can be found in the following publication: Beaudoin, A., Bernier, P.Y., Villemaire, P., Guindon, L., Guo, X.-J. 2017. Tracking forest attributes across Canada between 2001 and 2011 using a kNN mapping approach applied to MODIS imagery, Canadian Journal of Forest Research 48: 85–93. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1139/cjfr-2017-0184 * Please cite this dataset as: 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 * This dataset contains these NFI forest attributes: ## LAND COVER : landbase vegetated, landbase non-vegetated, landcover treed, landcover non-treed ## TREE STRUCTURE : total above ground biomass, tree branches biomass, tree foliage biomass, stem bark biomass, stem wood biomass, total dead trees biomass, stand age, crown closure, tree stand heigth, merchantable volume, total volume ## TREE SPECIES : abies amabilis (amabilis fir), abies balsamea (balsam fir), abies lasiocarpa (subalpine fir), abies spp. (unidentified fir), acer macrophyllum (bigleaf maple), acer negundo (manitoba maple, box-elder), acer pensylvanicum (striped maple), acer rubrum (red maple), acer saccharinum (silver maple), acer saccharum (sugar maple), acer spicatum (mountain maple), acer spp. (unidentified maple), alnus rubra (red alder), alnus spp. (unidentified alder), arbutus menziesii (arbutus), betula alleghaniensis (yellow birch), betula papyrifera (white birch), betula populifolia (gray birch), betula spp. (unidentified birch), carpinus caroliniana (blue-beech), carya cordiformis (bitternut hickory), chamaecyparis nootkatensis (yellow-cedar), fagus grandifolia (american beech), fraxinus americana (white ash), fraxinus nigra (black ash), fraxinus pennsylvanica (red ash), juglans cinerea (butternut), juglans nigra (black walnut), juniperus virginiana (eastern redcedar), larix laricina (tamarack), larix lyallii (subalpine larch), larix occidentalis (western larch), larix spp. (unidentified larch), malus spp. (unidentified apple), ostrya virginiana (ironwood, hop-hornbeam), picea abies (norway spruce), picea engelmannii (engelmann spruce), picea glauca (white spruce), picea mariana (black spruce), picea rubens (red spruce), picea sitchensis (sitka spruce), picea spp. (unidentified spruce), pinus albicaulis (whitebark pine), pinus banksiana (jack pine), pinus contorta (lodgepole pine), pinus monticola (western white pine), pinus ponderosa (ponderosa pine), pinus resinosa (red pine), pinus spp. (unidentified pine), pinus strobus (eastern white pine), pinus sylvestris (scots pine), populus balsamifera (balsam poplar), populus grandidentata (largetooth aspen), populus spp. (unidentified poplar), populus tremuloides (trembling aspen), populus trichocarpa (black cottonwood), prunus pensylvanica (pin cherry), prunus serotina (black cherry), pseudotsuga menziesii (douglas-fir), quercus alba (white oak), quercus macrocarpa (bur oak), quercus rubra (red oak), quercus spp. (unidentified oak), salix spp. (unidentified willow), sorbus americana (american mountain-ash), thuja occidentalis (eastern white-cedar), thuja plicata (western redcedar), tilia americana (basswood), tsuga canadensis (eastern hemlock), tsuga heterophylla (western hemlock), tsuga mertensiana (mountain hemlock), tsuga spp. (unidentified hemlock), ulmus americana (white elm), unidentified needleaf, unidentified broadleaf, broadleaf species, needleaf species, unknown species

Temporal analysis of changes in the Iqaluit region, Nunavut, based on GeoAI features automatically extracted from satellite images acquired in 2012 and 2022. Simple geospatial analysis intersecting GeoAI multidate building features enables the detection of buildings observed in 2022 that were not detected in 2012. The addition of new buildings is a good indicator of urban development and/or sprawl. GeoAI enables temporal coverage of various areas in Canada, thus providing a useful tool for change detection and trend analysis at high resolution. While the series is still fairly new, and such examples are limited for the time being, NRCan strives to gradually increase its GeoAI data offering for both spatial and temporal coverage. For more information about the GeoAI - GeoBase Series, please visit the following link: https://open.canada.ca/data/en/dataset/74738ff5-5367-5958-9aee-98fffdcd1876

The dataset includes two data products derived from the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) imager operated by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) onboard Suomi National Polar-Orbiting Partnership (SNPP) satellite: 1) Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) 2) Snow Mask (Snow) with supplementary information about data quality and scene identification Each product, NDVI and Snow, has been derived at two spatial resolutions: 1) I-band resolution for 250-m spatial grid (VIIRS image bands I1 and I2) 2) M-band resolution for 500-m spatial grid (VIIRS moderate resolution bands M5 and M7) Datasets are produced with a daily temporal frequency, i.e. one file per day. The study area with the size of 5,700 km × 4,800 km covers Canada and neighboring regions (Trishchenko, 2019). The VIIRS time series are produced from VIIRS /SNPP imagery at CCRS from January 1, 2017.

The 2000 AAFC Land Use is a culmination and curated metaanalysis of several high-quality spatial datasets produced between 1990 and 2021 using a variety of methods by teams of researchers as techniques and capabilities have evolved. The information from the input datasets was consolidated and embedded within each 30m x 30m pixel to create consolidated pixel histories, resulting in thousands of unique combinations of evidence ready for careful consideration. Informed by many sources of high-quality evidence and visual observation of imagery in Google Earth, we apply an incremental strategy to develop a coherent best current understanding of what has happened in each pixel through the time series.