The objective of this GeoInnovations 99 project in Target Area 5 was to recover and make available for public distribution via GeoGratis a series of historical land use maps which depict the growth of 23 major urban areas onto potentially valuable agricultural and recreational lands. The land use data at 1:50,000 scale is taken from the unpublished results of the Canada Land Use Monitoring Program – 1966 to 1976.. The land capability to support agriculture and recreation, also at 1:50,000 scale, is extracted from the Canada Land Inventory. The public domain access and delivery is made possible through GeoGratis.

The main outcome of the project is the availability, at no cost, of a consistent set of land use and land capability digital maps over the 23 Census Metropolitan Areas in Canada which reflect land use and land cover conditions in 1966, 1971 and in 1976.

There were also other bi-products generated as a result of this project. The mapping scale of the public domain Canada Land Inventory has been extended to encompass what was digitally captured at the 1:50,000 scale. Many of these maps extent well beyond the mapping limits of these 23 major urban areas.

The datasets can be utilized by researchers to study the growth and impact of major urban centers into our limited land resources. They can help land use planners make more informed decisions to circumvent this  pattern. They can be utilized by the general public as a historical account of how our cities grew over the period 1966 to 1971. They will no doubt be utilized by multitudes of public and private audiences for a variety of other unforseen purposes.

Although not obvious in the results, the Canada Land Use Monitoring Program invented and utilized a special computerized methodology of updating land use maps. This project has helped Spatialanalysis to promote this Canadian invention.

This project was quite beneficial to our future commercial activities. Spatialanalysis has plans to recover similar data for the 1981 to 1986 time period, and perhaps to continue the mapping to more recent Census years using socio-economic data to complement the results. This project has also refined our capability to recover other historical digital map data sets from the Canada Geographic Information System digital data archives.

Spatialanalysis is well aware of the value of partnerships between government and private industry having won the Information Management Award for Excellence in the Public Sector in 1998 when this data recovery exercise was first initiated. This project could not have been made possible without the early financing and continued support of the Public Archives of Canada and the financial and subject-matter advise of the Canadian Wildlife Service (Pacific and Northern Region) of Environment Canada. We are equally grateful to the staff GeoAccess Division of Natural Resources Canada, and to the GeoInnovations 99 Program for the realization and delivery of these results to the Canadian public.