Canadian Agricultural Landscape Diversity And Rotation Indices

Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada provides landscape-level indices for Soil Landscapes of Canada and EcoDistrict polygons across agricultural regions. The dataset includes a Shannon Diversity Index quantifying spatial crop diversity in 2021 and a Rotation Turbulence Index measuring crop rotation changes from 2011 to 2021. Data is aggregated to reporting-boundary polygons and was last updated in April 2026.

Use Cases

• Modeling the relationship between the Shannon Diversity Index and regional soil characteristics for land management.
• Analyzing the Rotation Turbulence Index to assess the stability of agricultural practices over a decade.
• Correlating aggregated index values at the EcoDistrict polygon level with climate or yield data.
• Mapping spatial crop diversity patterns across Canada's agricultural regions using the provided geospatial boundaries.

Strengths

• Provides two distinct calculated indices (Shannon Diversity and Rotation Turbulence) for analysis.
• Offers data aggregated to two hierarchical ecological frameworks (SLC and EcoDistrict polygons).
• Covers a 10-year temporal range for the Rotation Turbulence Index from 2011 to 2021.

Limitations

• Specific row counts, column details, and dataset size are unknown.
• Data is aggregated to reporting polygons, limiting field-level analysis.
• The primary agricultural landscape snapshot is from 2021, with historical change measured only back to 2011.

Provenance

Source

Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada

Collection Method

Derived indices calculated from agricultural landscape data and aggregated to reporting boundaries.

Time Range

2011 to 2021

Freshness

Last updated April 2026.

Geography

Agricultural regions across Canada