Forest Canopy Height Standard Deviation for Canada, 2015

Canada's forested ecosystems, covering approximately 650 million hectares, are represented in this 30-meter resolution raster dataset. It provides the standard deviation of canopy height derived from 2015 lidar first returns, indicating variability in forest structure. The data was produced by Natural Resources Canada within the National Terrestrial Ecosystem Monitoring System framework, using methods described by Matasci et al. (2018).

Use Cases

• Model forest biomass and carbon stocks based on canopy height variability.
• Analyze forest structural diversity and habitat complexity for ecological studies.
• Monitor changes in forest structure over time as part of a time-series analysis.
• Calibrate or validate satellite-derived forest structure products using lidar metrics.

Strengths

• Spatial resolution is explicitly stated as 30 meters.
• Geographic coverage is extensive, spanning approximately 650 million hectares of Canada's forested ecosystems.
• Based on peer-reviewed science and a published methodology (Matasci et al., 2018).

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.
• The description states the products are for strategic-level monitoring and not intended for operational forest management.

Provenance

Source

Natural Resources Canada

Collection Method

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

Time Range

1985–2011 (time-series context), with this specific layer representing 2015.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-16 16:04:29.305214; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Canada's forested ecosystems