Ecosystem Map of Great Slave Lake Area, Northwest Territories, 1997-2011

Nine ecosystem classes for peatland, wetland, and upland areas derived from a Random Forest classification of multi-date, multi-sensor remote sensing images. This map covers the area surrounding Great Slave Lake, Northwest Territories, Canada, for the period 1997 to 2011, providing a pre-2014 fire season baseline. The dataset was produced by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and includes a tenth class for historical fire scars undergoing revegetation.

Use Cases

• Classifying peatland and wetland types based on the nine defined ecosystem classes.
• Analyzing post-fire vegetation succession based on the historical fire scar class.
• Establishing a pre-disturbance baseline for studying the effects of large fire seasons like 2014.
• Training or validating land cover models using the Random Forest classification and field validation methodology.

Strengths

• Map includes nine specific ecosystem classes for peatlands, wetlands, and uplands, plus a tenth for historical fires.
• Classification uses a Random Forest model trained on multi-date, multi-sensor imagery and validated with field data.
• Provides a temporal baseline (1997-2011) specifically for understanding effects of the 2014 fire season.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count and dataset size are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Collection Method

Random Forest classification trained on multi-date, multi-sensor remote sensing images, with training and validation from field data and high-resolution Worldview-2 image interpretation.

Time Range

1997 to 2011

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-12 19:40:49.529042; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Area surrounding Great Slave Lake, Northwest Territories, Canada