Forest Age Map of Canada at 30-Meter Resolution for 2022

Landsat-derived forest age for Canada 2022 provides a satellite-based map at a 30-meter spatial resolution across the country's forested ecozones. The product, developed by Natural Resources Canada within the National Terrestrial Ecosystem Monitoring System (NTEMS), uses three approaches to determine age, with the allometric method applied to the greatest area (86.6%). Trees older than 150 years are grouped into an 'old tree' category, and the methodology is detailed in Maltman et al. (2023).

Use Cases

• Modeling forest carbon sequestration and climate change impacts based on forest age structure.
• Analyzing patterns of forest disturbance and recovery over time using the described disturbance and recovery approaches.
• Informing sustainable forestry management and conservation planning with spatially detailed age estimates.
• Calibrating or validating ecological models using the 30-meter resolution age map across Canadian ecozones.

Strengths

• Provides a 30-meter spatial resolution map, offering detailed spatial granularity.
• Employs three distinct methodological approaches (disturbance, recovery, allometric) to estimate age, with the disturbance approach noted as the most accurate.
• Covers all of Canada's forested ecozones, providing national-scale coverage.
• Methodology is peer-reviewed and published (Maltman et al., 2023).

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• The allometric approach, required for 86.6% of the area, is described as less accurate than the disturbance-based method.
• Row count and dataset size are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.

Provenance

Source

Natural Resources Canada

Collection Method

Derived from Landsat and MODIS satellite data using disturbance mapping, spectral recovery analysis, and allometric modeling.

Time Range

2022

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-16 16:03:10.501759; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Canada's forested ecozones