Satellite-Based Forest Inventory for Canada with Disturbance History (1985-2020)

Satellite-Based Forest Inventory (SBFI) provides data on Canada's forested land cover, structure, species, and stand age from 2020, along with stand-replacing disturbances from 1985 to 2020. It contains over 25 million polygons delineated from 30-meter resolution Landsat imagery, covering approximately 650 million hectares of Canada's forest ecosystems. The dataset was developed by Natural Resources Canada within the National Terrestrial Ecosystem Monitoring System framework and is published under an open license.

Use Cases

• Modeling forest disturbance and recovery patterns based on the 35-year disturbance history (1985-2020).
• Mapping forest structure and species composition across jurisdictional boundaries based on homogeneous stand polygons.
• Analyzing forest age and land cover changes at a national scale based on the 2020 composite and historical layers.
• Monitoring managed and unmanaged forest areas using a consistent methodology and data source.

Strengths

• Covers approximately 650 million hectares of Canada's forest ecosystems.
• Contains over 25 million delineated polygons representing homogeneous forest conditions.
• Uses a consistent 30-meter spatial resolution Landsat data source and methodology across the entire country.
• Provides a 35-year temporal record for stand-replacing disturbances (1985-2020).

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.

Provenance

Source

Natural Resources Canada

Collection Method

Polygons were delineated using a multiresolution segmentation algorithm applied to Landsat surface-reflectance composites and disturbance layers derived with the C2C approach.

Time Range

Forest inventory data from 2020, with disturbance history from 1985 to 2020.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-16 16:03:55.012783; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Canada