Monitoring Canada’s forests. Part 1: Completion of the EOSD land cover project

Capture of land cover information is a key requirement for supporting forest monitoring and management. In Canada, provincial and territorial forest stewards use land cover information to aid in management and planning activities. At the federal level, land cover information is required to aid in meeting national and international reporting obligations. To support monitoring of Canada’s forests, the Earth Observation for Sustainable Developments of Forests (EOSD) project was initiated as a partnership between the Canadian Forest Service (CFS) and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), with provincial and territorial participation and support. The EOSD project produced a 23 class land cover map of the forested area of Canada representing circa year 2000 conditions (EOSD LC 2000). Including image overlap outside of the forested area of Canada, over 480 Landsat-7 Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) images were classified and more than 80% of Canada was mapped, culminating in the production of 630 1:250 000 map sheet products for unfettered sharing. EOSD LC 2000 is the most detailed and comprehensive map of the forested area of Canada ever produced. The objectives of this communication are to provide background on the project and associated methods, summarize the process of product development and dissemination, and provide a synopsis of the resultant land cover tabulations. Finally, key lessons learned from undertaking such a large, multipartner, collaborative project are provided.