Mean Forest Canopy Height Across Canada at 30m Resolution, 2015

Canada's forested ecosystems, covering approximately 650 million hectares, are represented by this dataset of mean canopy height derived from lidar and Landsat data. The product was generated by Natural Resources Canada within the National Terrestrial Ecosystem Monitoring System framework for strategic-level forest monitoring from 1985 to 2011. It provides a 30-meter resolution raster layer for 2015, based on peer-reviewed science combining lidar plot metrics with Landsat pixel composites using a nearest neighbour imputation approach.

Use Cases

• Modeling carbon storage and biomass based on mean canopy height metrics.
• Monitoring long-term forest structural dynamics and change over the 1985-2011 time period.
• Strategic-level assessment of forest health and ecosystem services across Canada's 650 million hectares of forest.
• Calibrating or validating other remote sensing products using the lidar-derived height estimates.

Strengths

• Derived from peer-reviewed science and methods published in Remote Sensing of Environment.
• Covers a vast geographic extent of approximately 650 million hectares.
• Provides a consistent 30-meter spatial resolution for wall-to-wall analysis.
• Integrates multiple data sources (lidar plots and Landsat composites) using a Random Forests-based imputation approach.

Limitations

• Description metadata is limited; actual data quality requires manual inspection after download.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Explicitly intended for strategic-level monitoring, not for operational-level forest management decisions.

Provenance

Source

Natural Resources Canada, National Terrestrial Ecosystem Monitoring System (NTEMS).

Collection Method

Generated by combining lidar plot metrics with Landsat pixel-based composites using a nearest neighbour imputation approach with a Random Forests-based distance metric.

Time Range

1985–2011 (time-series framework), with this specific product for 2015.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-16 16:04:54.746028; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Canada's forested ecosystems.