Development and implementation of a stand-level satellite-based forest inventory for Canada (English, PDF)

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2026-03-16

Satellite-Based Forest Inventory (SBFI) informing on Canada's forested land cover, disturbance recovery, structure, species, stand age from 2020, and stand-replacing disturbances from 1985-2020. It is developed within the framework of Canada’s National Terrestrial Ecosystem Monitoring System (NTEMS). The SBFI polygons represent homogeneous forest conditions akin to those of stands delineated in a strategic forest inventory. Over 25 million SBFI polygons were delineated using a multiresolution segmentation algorithm applied to the 2020 Landsat surface-reflectance BAP image composite (30-m spatial resolution), fire year, and harvest year layers derived from Landsat with the C2C approach. A minimum map unit of 0.45 ha (5 pixels) was used to define polygons. The entirety of Canada's forest ecosystems were mapped using the same data, attributes, and temporal representation, resulting in a common vegetation inventory system of Canada's ~650 Mha forested ecosystems. Given the large and diverse forest area of Canada, the strength of an SBFI lies in its use of a consistent data source and methodology across jurisdictional boundaries, and across managed and unmanaged forest areas, enabling…

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