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Soil Landscapes of Canada Version 3.1.1

SLC v3.1.1 (August 2007) is the latest revision of the Soil Landscapes of Canada, which was developed by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada to provide information about the country’s agricultural soils at the province and national levels. SLC v3.1.1 is a replacement for SLC v3.1.

Updates in SLC Version 3.1.1 include:

Soil Order, Great Group and Subgroup codes have been rechecked versus the Canadian System of Soil Classification, Third Edition.
Addition of soil data for agricultural polygons in Ontario that were inadvertently omitted in SLCv3.1.
Enhancements to "border" SLC polygon records in the national SLCv3.1.1 Component Table.
Incorporation of new information into the Component Table, Soil Names Files and Soil Layer Files.
The data base table structure is unchanged, except for renaming of the Component Table Field “SOILTYPE” to “SOILKEY”.
Please review the Readme document provided for the full list of updates.

SLC v3.1.1 provides new soil information at a scale of 1:1 million for the major agricultural regions of Canada. Further releases will provide similar updated information for the rest of the country. The SLC v3.1.1 map series maintains the linkage to the national Ecological Stratification System for Canada. SLC maps are available in several versions (1.0 to 2.2 and now 3.1.1) from the AAFC CanSIS web site.

The Soil Landscapes of Canada Version 3.1.1 has the same GIS polygon coverage as SLCv3.0 and v3.1, representing the major agricultural regions of Canada. Although there are both provincial and national coverages, the SLCv3.1.1 component information is for the agricultural areas of Canada only. An exception to note is that some provinces (i.e. AB, NS, and PEI) contain CMP, SNF and SLF data for the entire province (i.e. beyond the agricultural areas).

Dataset descriptions

CIVIL coverage
HYDRO coverage
SLC coverage
1. Polygon Attribute Table (.PAT)
2. Land Area Table (.LAT)
3. Component Table (.CMP)
4. Ecozone Table (.ECOZONE)
5. Ecoregion Table (.ECOREGION)
6. Ecodistrict Table (.ECODISTRICT)
Data model

Availability

SLC v3.1.1 can be downloaded from the AAFC CanSIS website in ARC/INFO export and shapefile formats in Decimal Degrees (DD). Component Table, Soil Name Files, Soil Layer Files and Land Area tables are available in .dbf format.

The SLC v3.1.1 data is available to download as a "package" by individual province, or by the national coverage. Each zip "package" contains the CMP, SNF, SLF and LAT file.

Download .zip files - Please see SLCv311Readme_en.doc for further details.

For complete coverages outside the agricultural regions of the country, SLC maps are available in the previous versions 1.0 to 2.2.

Acknowledgements

This revision was carried out under the direction of the Soil Landscapes of Canada Working Group: E. Kenney, BC.; T. Brierley, AB; A. Anderson and L. Kozak, SK; W. Fraser, MB; D. Kroetsch, ON; L. Lamontagne, QC; H. Rees, NB; D. Holmstrom, PE; K. Webb, NS; G. Patterson, NS; K.Senkiw and X. Geng, CanSIS.

Acknowledgement is also extended to others across the country who made a significant contribution: M. Bock, AB; G. Lelyk, MB; H. Younnie and C. Stewart, PE; E. Woodrow, NF; S, Fahmy, NB; S. Smith, BC; A. Villeneuve, CanSIS, D. Brewin, CanSIS.

Further Information

CITATION:	Soil Landscapes of Canada Working Group, 2007. Soil Landscapes of Canada v3.1.1 Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. (digital map and database at 1:1 million scale).
COPYRIGHT:	Anyone may use these data free of charge, provided they acknowledge Agriculture and Agri-food Canada's authorship. AAFC retains exclusive rights, title, and ownership of this data. Copying and redistribution of part or all of this dataset is acceptable, provided that the contents of this file are included with the redistribution. AAFC may be unable to answer queries about these data if they were obtained through a third party.
DISCLAIMER:	Although every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy, currency and reliability of the content, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada assumes no liability deemed to have been caused directly or indirectly by this data.