Annual Dominant Tree Species Maps for Canada, 1984-2022

86.1% overall accuracy characterizes annual maps of Canada's dominant tree species from 1984 to 2022. The dataset covers 650 million hectares of forested ecosystems at a 30-meter resolution, produced by Natural Resources Canada using Landsat imagery and Random Forests models. These maps are part of the National Terrestrial Ecosystem Monitoring System and are validated with independent data.

Use Cases

• Modeling long-term trends in tree species composition based on the 39-year time series.
• Assessing regional forest dynamics using the nationally consistent spatial resolution and analytical approach.
• Validating ecological models with the provided spectral, geographic, climatic, and topographic descriptive metrics.
• Analyzing temporal consistency of species transitions using the post-classification Hidden Markov Model process.

Strengths

• High overall accuracy of 86.1% ± 0.14% (95% confidence interval) from independent validation.
• Covers 650 million hectares of Canada's forested ecosystems.
• Provides a consistent 39-year time series from 1984 to 2022 at a 30-meter spatial resolution.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Data may reflect geographic bias inherent to open_canada, focusing solely on Canadian ecosystems.

Provenance

Source

Natural Resources Canada

Collection Method

Developed using Landsat time-series imagery and regionally representative Random Forests models with training samples from Canada's National Forest Inventory.

Time Range

1984-2022

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-16 16:02:57.034813; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Canada