Historic Forest Aerial Orthophotographs of Southern Quebec

Historic forest airborne imagery provides annual orthophotograph mosaics for ecoforest inventory and planning in southern Quebec. Mosaics have been produced since 2002 for inventory and 2004 for planning, with spatial resolutions ranging from 4 cm to 150 cm. The imagery covers territory south of the 52nd parallel and is acquired on approximately a 10-year cycle for inventory and annually for planning.

Use Cases

• Train land cover classification models using orthophotograph mosaics with variable spectral bands (PAN, IRP, RGB).
• Analyze forest change over time using annual imagery from the global forest planning cycle.
• Map spatial resolution variability (4-150 cm) across planning, monitoring, and control image mosaics.
• Support photo-interpretation processes for ecoforest map production with orthophotographs assembled into annual mosaics.

Strengths

• Annual collection provides consistent temporal coverage for the global forest planning cycle.
• Spatial resolution as fine as 4 cm available for some planning and monitoring imagery.
• Imagery covers almost all of Quebec south of the 52nd parallel.
• Data available in multiple formats (JPEG 2000, ECW, GeoTIFF) and via web services (WMTS).

Limitations

• Planning, monitoring, and control orthophotography mosaics are only available for viewing, not for download.
• Imagery acquired through partnerships is excluded due to restrictive broadcast licenses.
• Spatial resolution is highly variable (4-150 cm) for planning images, complicating uniform analysis.

Provenance

Source

Government and Municipalities of Québec

Collection Method

Acquired by aerial overview flights for ecoforest inventory and forest planning.

Time Range

Since 2002 for ecoforest inventory; since 2004 for planning, monitoring, and control.

Freshness

Updated annually for planning cycle; inventory cycle approximately every 10 years.

Geography

Southern Quebec, south of the 52nd parallel.