Human Access of Canada's Landscapes

Definition of Major Human Access : For the purposes of this project, we used the following definition of major human access: Access is the combined land surface anthropogenic disturbances caused mainly by industrial activities, which include, but are not limited to, roads, mines, clearcuts, wellsites, pipelines, transmission lines, and agricultural clearings.

This dataset applies to 100% of Canada. Access datasets used in the analysis were considered to be relatively coarse, or at least be visible on Landsat satellite imagery. This update from the circa 2001 version was carried out using the following 31 datasets: 1. Access datset for Canada -- Global Forest Watch Canada [not published but circa 2001]): This dataset was created as the initial step in creating Global Forest Watch Canada’s Intact Forest Landscapes dataset. It included all roads as mapped by DMTI Spatial (2000); all disturbances mapped by Global Forest Forest Watch using Landsat satellite images. (1 dataset); 2. Access dataset for Peace Region, British Columbia (Global Forest Watch Canada [not published but circa 2010]. This dataset was created for the publication Atlas of land cover, industrial land uses and industrial-caused land change in the Peace Region of British Columbia , available at: http://globalforestwatch.ca/ (1 dataset); 3. Agriculture Cropland -- Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. 2000. Land Cover for agricultural regions of Canada, circa 2000. Available at: http://www.agr.gc.ca/eng/?id=1343071073307#a9 (14 datasets); 4. National Roads Network of Canada -- Available at: http://geobase.ca/geobase/en/data/nrn/index.html (13 datasets); 5. Environment Canada boreal anthropogenic disturbances -- The dataset we used is the precursor one to this newly-released dataset: Environment Canada. 2013. Anthropogenic disturbances across the Canadian boreal ecosystem collected from 2008 to 2010 Landsat imagery Gridded to a 1km resolution . Available at: http://data.gc.ca/data/en/dataset/c5a9967d-1621-4dae-9f2a-79a55dbcebd0 (1 dataset). An ecological buffer of 500 metres was applied to the datasets, then they were merged and all overlaps dissolved.