Canadian Soil Information Service (CANSIS)

The Canadian Soil Information Service (CanSis) is a dissemination platform for Canada’s land resource data. It provides public access to the National Soil Database (NSDB), which contains soil, landscape, and climatic data for all of Canada and serves as the national archive for land resources information collected by federal and provincial field surveys, or created by land data analysis projects. The NSDB includes GIS coverages at a variety of scales, and the characteristics of each named soil series. It contains links to: 1) large-scale (1:30 million to 1:1 million) eco-regional datasets  2) the Soil Map and Land Potential Database of Canada at scale 1:5 million 3) the Agroecological Resource Area Databases for the Prairies at scale 1:2 million. The Agroecological Resource Areas (ARAs) represent areas of generally similar agricultural potential, and are based on ecoclimatic zonation, landform and soil characteristics. They are therefore the Canadian equivalents of agro-ecological zones but cover only the three prairie provinces of Canada. The ARAs have served as convenient planning units upon which to develop data for use in agricultural research. 4) the Soil Landscapes of Canada, a series of GIS coverages that show the major characteristics of soil and land for the whole country. SLCs were compiled at a scale of 1:1 million on the basis of existing soil survey maps, and information is organized according to a uniform national set of soil and landscape criteria based on permanent natural attributes. 5) the Canada Land Inventory, a comprehensive multi-disciplinary land inventory of rural Canada, covering over 2.5 million square kilometers of land and water at scale 1: 250,000. Land capability for agriculture, forestry, wildlife, recreation, wildlife was mapped. Although the information is old, and better information is available for some areas as part of more recent soil surveys, the interpretations are still largely valid, and many jurisdictions still use them for land use planning purposes. 6) Detailed Soil Surveys at varying scales (1:20,000 to 1:250,000) covering much of the significant agricultural areas of Canada. Canada’s Soil Information Service sets an example for other countries of public investment in a vertically integrated biophysical assessment of land resources, from the basic compilation of soil, land use, climatic data, towards full-spectrum interpretation for multi-use land suitability, and making all datasets publicly available.