Annual Hudson Bay Lowlands Surface Water Masks 1985 - 2021 Data (French, TIFF)

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Publisher-reported update

2024-04-11

The Hudson Bay Lowlands (HBL) is the wettest ecozone in Canada with 80% of its area covered by wetlands. It forms the third largest wetland in the world and is composed almost entirely of permafrost and non-frozen subarctic peatlands that store more carbon in the first 2 m of soil than the total carbon stored in any other ecozone in Canada. The HBL is also home to large mammals including polar bears, caribou, moose, and provides important breeding habitat for migratory birds. Surface water dynamics in the HBL are both a consequence and a driver of climate change, impacting evapotranspiration, permafrost thaw and carbon budgets under wetting / drying conditions as well as wildlife habitat. Previously, dynamic surface water products were generated from historical Landsat data to inform surface water trends in the HBL based on binary classifications of land versus water at 30 m spatial resolution (Olthof and Rainville, 2022). However, the HBL contains many water features smaller than 30 m, including streams and patterned fens that require a sub-pixel mapping approach to depict these small features as the percent water fraction within each pixel footprint. The annual surface water…

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