Title: Peatlands of Canada
Citation: Tarnocai, C., Kettles, I. M. & Lacelle, B. (2011). Peatlands of Canada. Geological Survey of Canada, Open File, 6561, Natural Resources Canada. ttps://doi.org/10.4095/288786
Study Site: Canada
Purpose: Peatlands, which are dominant features of the Canadian landscape, cover approximately 1136 x 103 km2, or 13% of the land area. These peatlands are essential to the global environment because they retain, purify and deliver fresh water, store carbon, absorb pollutants and support numerous species of plants and wildlife, many of them identified as endangered. Under current scenarios of increasing greenhouse gases, the expected increases in global temperatures have the potential to affect peatlands in many areas. Most of the peatlands (97%) occur in the Boreal Peatland Region (64%) and Subarctic Peatland Region (33%). Because of the large area they cover and their high organic carbon content, these peatlands contain approximately 147 Gt soil carbon, which is about 59% of the organic carbon stored in all Canadian soils.
Abstract: This third version of the peatland database and accompanying maps is organized into the 5
sections described below:
01_DATA: folder containing the digital GIS peatland database in ESRI® shapefile format
(found in the 01_1_Shp subdirectory) and in ARC/INFO export (.e00) format (found in
01_2_ArcInfo Export subdirectory). Please note, the shapefile does not contain the peatlands
layer table used to calculate carbon content and mass. The file “peat032005lyr.dbf”, found in the
01_1_shp folder, is the layer table in dBase format.
02_PUBMAP: folder containing the published maps. There is one sub-directory of poster-sized
maps (02_1_Poster sized maps) with the original rasterized ESRI plot files (.rtl) and the same
files converted to pdf format. A second sub-directory (02_2_Page sized maps) provides the
poster maps reduced to page-size in a .jpg format.
03_METADATA: folder with documentation in pdf format.
04_APPS: application software folder with software ArcExplorer® which allows the user to
visualize shapefiles.
05_STATISTICS: folder with statistics related to area of peatland by peatland type, SOC masses
and SOC contents by peatland type, and administrative provinces and ecoclimatic regions.
Statistics were calculated after projecting the data in a Lambert Azimuthal equal area projection
with the specifications below.
Supplemental Information Summary:
Research:
Further Info:
Status: Complete
Keywords:
mapping,
Geographical coordinates: North: 90.00, South: 41.75 East: -50.00 West: -141.00
Bounding Temporal Extent: Start Date: 2011-07-05, End
Date: 2011-07-05
