Canada's Intact Forest Landscapes (Update 2010)

An intact forest landscape is defined by Global Forest Watch Canada as a contiguous mosaic of naturally occurring ecosystems, including forest, bog, water, tundra, and rock outcrops, that is within a forest ecozone, and that is essentially undisturbed by significant human influence visible on Landsat satellite images. Intact forest landscapes are the best remaining pieces of our once-intact forest landscapes and they are therefore critical to the restoration of ecosystem functioning in areas affected by human development. By mapping the remaining intact forest landscapes within Canada’s forest ecozones, we aim provide better information for balancing industry needs and values with the need for recognition of non-market values, many of which are associated with relatively undisturbed forests. Mapping intact forest landscapes provides a baseline from which future assessments of changes to Canada’s remaining intact forest landscapes can be made and from which further analysis can be performed to assist forest conservation planning and decision-making. Intact forest landscapes were originally mapped by excluding the following types of disturbances and associated buffer exclusion zone from potential intact forest landscapes: 1. Settlements; 2. Infrastructure used for communication between settlements and industrial sites; or for industrial exploitation of natural resources (including roads, railways, navigable waterways, pipelines, trunk power transmission lines and other linear disturbances); 3. Agricultural lands; 4. Territories disturbed by economic activities during the last 30-70 years (logging, major reservoirs, mining operation sites, abandoned agricultural lands, etc.); 5. Artificially restored forests, or tree plantations, if their existence can be detected on Landsat satellite imagery. In addition to the disturbances listed above, large waterbodies (>400,000 ha) and waterbodies which represented more than half of a remaining intact forest landscape fragment were also eliminated from the dataset. It should be noted that some human impacts are invisible from space, such as small forest roads and paths. Other smaller-scale impacts (including some selective logging) that occurred more than 30-70 years ago often become invisible on satellite imagery and indistinguishable from the natural dynamics of the forest. The previous version of the intact forest landscape data set wasbased primarily on the visual interpretation of 1988-2002 Landsat images, and some imagery from the 2003-2006 period. The update included in this version applies to 41% of Canada's forest ecozones. This update was carried out using three distinct datasets: 1) Global Forest Watch Canada (2010): Intact Forest Landscapes of Canada circa 2001; 2) Environment Canada (2010) boreal population of woodland caribou herd ranges disturbance dataset, as of circa 2010, and; 3) Global Forest Watch Canada (2013) Alberta Intact Forest Landscapes Update as of circa 2010.

Limitations of Dataset-- This dataset represents the most current Canada-wide Intact Forest Landscapes dataset published by Global Forest Watch Canada. However, it has limitations that preclude it from superseding the original circa 2001 dataset. Namely: 1) users looking for the complete extent of intact forest landscapes across Canada as of 2010 should not rely on this dataset; This dataset does not identify intact forest landscapes as of circa2010 in neither the southern portions of the boreal forest nor the temperate forests. The 2010 update was performed in the identified study area only; 2) this dataset combines different datasets created using different methodologies. The circa2001 intact forest landscapes dataset remains the only nationally consistent dataset available, and; 3) the circa 2001 dataset remains the best dataset to portray intact forest landscapes in Canada in terms of a more consistent date using a nationally consistent methodology.