Manitoba Fire History Vector Data from Hand-Drawn Maps

Manitoba province is covered by this vector dataset documenting fire boundaries from 1980 to 1991. Forestry Canada produced it by manually tracing fire perimeters from photocopied 1:250,000 scale maps. The dataset's locational accuracy is noted as fair to poor, with some boundaries offset by kilometers when compared to satellite imagery.

Use Cases

• Analyzing spatial patterns of historical wildfires in Manitoba using the vector boundary data.
• Studying changes in fire frequency or burned area over the 1980-1991 period.
• Comparing manually digitized fire perimeters against modern remote sensing products.
• Providing a historical reference layer for ecological or forestry management models.

Strengths

• Provides a decadal record (1980-1991) of fire events for a major Canadian province.
• Cross-platform presence on Data.gov and NASA EarthData indicates recognized importance for research.

Limitations

• Locational accuracy is documented as fair to poor, with offsets of up to a few kilometers from satellite truth.
• Sources conflict on the last updated date, with one listing 1991-12-31 and another listing 2026-03-13, suggesting potential metadata errors.

Provenance

Source

Forestry Canada

Collection Method

Hand-drawn boundaries of fires on photocopies of 1:250,000 scale maps, later digitized into vector format.

Time Range

1980 to 1991

Freshness

1991-12-31 23:59:59.999000

Geography

Province of Manitoba, Canada