Since 1988, the governments of Canada and Quebec have been working together to conserve, restore, protect and develop the St. Lawrence River under the St. Lawrence Action Plan (SLAP). One of the projects identified under the theme of biodiversity conservation is the development of an integrated plan for the conservation of the natural environments and biodiversity of the St. Lawrence River. The identification of priority sites for conservation has been the first step of this planning exercise. Conservation planning of natural environments requires a reliable, accurate and up-to-date image of the spatial distribution of ecosystems in the study area. In order to produce an Atlas of Priority Sites for Conservation in the St. Lawrence Lowlands, an updated cartography of the land cover of this vast territory was undertaken. This project required obtaining reliable information on the natural environments of the St. Lawrence Lowlands. Although several land cover mapping projects have been conducted for specific types of habitats, it was particularly important to obtain a homogeneous product that would cover the entire territory and that would provide the most detailed information on its various thematic components: agricultural, aquatic, human-modified and forest environments, wetlands as well as old fields and bare ground. The methodology used to produce the land cover mapping of the St. Lawrence Lowlands thus relied mainly on combining and enhancing the best existing products for each theme. This project was made in collaboration with MDDELCC as part of the St. Lawrence Action Plan (SLAP).

This dataset provides the spatial distribution of vegetation types, soil carbon, and physiographic features in the Imnavait Creek area, Alaska. Specific attributes include vegetation, percent water, glacial geology, soil carbon, a digital elevation model (DEM), surficial geology and surficial geomorphology. Data are also provided on the research grids for georeferencing. The map data are from a variety of sources and encompass the period 1970-06-01 to 2015-08-31.

The files linked to this reference are the geospatial data created as part of the completion of the baseline vegetation inventory project for the NPS park unit. Current format is ArcGIS file geodatabase but older formats may exist as shapefiles. A total of 88,479 acres (35,806 ha) comprising LAMR, ALFL and its environ was mapped. The area mapped within the Park boundary was 43,037 acres (17, 417 ha). Thirty-four map units were developed to describe the landscape. Of all the map units, the most frequently occurring within the entire mapping area was Map Unit 8, Honey Mesquite Shrubland with 825 polygons ranging in size from under 0.01 acres to over 285 acres. The most abundant map unit in terms of area was Map Unit 17, Upland Slopes/Rolling Hills Vegetation Complex at 27,128 acres or about 31% of the total mapped area but 18% of the Park. Normally the standard minimum mapping unit for NPS vegetation mapping projects is defined as 0.5 hectares. However, this definition was used as a guideline and the actual minimum threshold defined by the high resolution of the aerial photography was more in the range of 1/4 acre.

The files linked to this reference are the geospatial data created as part of the completion of the baseline vegetation inventory project for the NPS park unit. Current format is ArcGIS file geodatabase but older formats may exist as shapefiles. A total of 88,479 acres (35,806 ha) comprising LAMR, ALFL and its environ was mapped. The area mapped within the Park boundary was 43,037 acres (17, 417 ha). Thirty-four map units were developed to describe the landscape. Of all the map units, the most frequently occurring within the entire mapping area was Map Unit 8, Honey Mesquite Shrubland with 825 polygons ranging in size from under 0.01 acres to over 285 acres. The most abundant map unit in terms of area was Map Unit 17, Upland Slopes/Rolling Hills Vegetation Complex at 27,128 acres or about 31% of the total mapped area but 18% of the Park. Normally the standard minimum mapping unit for NPS vegetation mapping projects is defined as 0.5 hectares. However, this definition was used as a guideline and the actual minimum threshold defined by the high resolution of the aerial photography was more in the range of 1/4 acre.

The files linked to this reference are the geospatial data created as part of the completion of the baseline vegetation inventory project for the NPS park unit. Current format is ArcGIS file geodatabase but older formats may exist as shapefiles. In order to avoid two repetitive ground field efforts, the sampling plan was devised from a combination of both vegetation maps. Using OR logic, overlays were created using both maps as input for each class, and random samples were developed for each class in excess of 30 polygons. Where there were less than 30 polygons sample sites were selected non-randomly from each polygon (i.e. a 100% sample). A total of 512 ground sampling sites were developed from a total of 21 vegetation and land cover classes which are represented on both vegetation maps. Using GIS tools, an ASCII file was generated with ground coordinates representing each of these sites. The 512 sets of coordinates were appropriately re-formatted and directly downloaded as waypoints in three North American Rockwell PLGR GPS receivers. During the week of August 4, 1997 three field crews of two persons each worked together at the monument in a coordinated effort to identify vegetation/cover types at each of the sites. The field crews had a paper map showing the location of the plots and the polygon boundaries (but not attributes) overlaid on topographic data. One team member operated the GPS receiver to navigate to the site, and the other identified the vegetation/cover type and provided a general physical description of the site environs. Sites were considered to be circular with a radius of 50 m. from the coordinate point. Where 2 or more vegetation/cover types occurred, or there was a mosaic of types, all were described within the 50 m. radius of the site coordinate.

The files linked to this reference are the geospatial data created as part of the completion of the baseline vegetation inventory project for the NPS park unit. Current format is ArcGIS file geodatabase but older formats may exist as shapefiles. In order to avoid two repetitive ground field efforts, the sampling plan was devised from a combination of both vegetation maps. Using OR logic, overlays were created using both maps as input for each class, and random samples were developed for each class in excess of 30 polygons. Where there were less than 30 polygons sample sites were selected non-randomly from each polygon (i.e. a 100% sample). A total of 512 ground sampling sites were developed from a total of 21 vegetation and land cover classes which are represented on both vegetation maps. Using GIS tools, an ASCII file was generated with ground coordinates representing each of these sites. The 512 sets of coordinates were appropriately re-formatted and directly downloaded as waypoints in three North American Rockwell PLGR GPS receivers. During the week of August 4, 1997 three field crews of two persons each worked together at the monument in a coordinated effort to identify vegetation/cover types at each of the sites. The field crews had a paper map showing the location of the plots and the polygon boundaries (but not attributes) overlaid on topographic data. One team member operated the GPS receiver to navigate to the site, and the other identified the vegetation/cover type and provided a general physical description of the site environs. Sites were considered to be circular with a radius of 50 m. from the coordinate point. Where 2 or more vegetation/cover types occurred, or there was a mosaic of types, all were described within the 50 m. radius of the site coordinate.

The files linked to this reference are the geospatial data created as part of the completion of the baseline vegetation inventory project for the NPS park unit. Current format is ArcGIS file geodatabase but older formats may exist as shapefiles. Data collected in the classification plots consisted of a GPS point, notes on the appearance of the site on the aerial imagery, site description, photo in each cardinal direction, plant association, confidence level of the association selection (weak, moderate, strong), and alternate association. Once the classification was finalized, all of the annotated polygons from the field maps were digitized using ArcMap 10.2 and attributed with a final association, alliance or map class. Because this was a true census (i.e. every portion of the Reserve was visited and there was no interpolation or modeling done) an accuracy assessment was not performed.

This U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) data release record consists of topographic data themes that cover the United States-Canada Transboundary Geospatial Fabric (TGF) domain. The 30-meter (m) raster data sets included under Topographic Derivatives are: 1) digital elevation (dem.tif) , 2) topographic wetness index (TWI, twi100X.tif) ,3) slope (rise over run, slope100X.tif), 4) aspect (asp100X.tif), and flow direction (fdr.tif). In some instances, values were multiplied by 100 and converted from double precision to integer format to reduce file sizes. All file formats are in GeoTIFF (Geographic Tagged Imaged Format).