NLWIS Help

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Maps

Access interactive maps to visualize information

The National Land and Water Information Service provides a growing number of interactive maps and tools focusing on land, soil, water, climate and biodiversity resources across Canada. Some interactive mapping sites feature data layers which can be used to view drought conditions, land use patterns, roads, or agricultural fields. Sites may also feature applications with tools to calculate distances, measure areas, create buffers and print maps.

These interactive mapping sites and tools will provide information to land-use decision makers to support an environmentally sustainable agricultural sector. The sites will be helpful to farmers who are completing nutrient management plans, realtors who require land parcel and zoning information or land-use planners assessing a subdivision proposal. Other uses of the interactive mapping sites may include public and private sectors responding to changing demographics, concerns about the health and safety of food and water, growing demands for new products, or issues surrounding environmentally sustainable food production.

Data

Find/access geospatial data

The "Data" section of the National Land and Water Information Service provides intermediate to expert users of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) with access to data through two specific methods:

1. Data download utilities allow users to select the layer they are interested in and save it to their own hard drive. Users can then uncompress the file and load it into their GIS software for viewing, analysis and printing.
2. Web Map Services (WMS) allow users to access GIS data layer information several different ways:
   1. Desktop - Users of Desktop GIS software will be able to connect to Web Map Services and add layers of information to their projects.
   2. Application construction - Developers of Web mapping applications will be able to build their applications around existing Web Map Services. Rather than store large amounts of data for the project they are working on, they can merely connect to these data sets which are maintained closest to the source.
   3. Existing Web mapping applications accessing WMS. Some Web mapping applications that are available through the National Land and Water Information Service provide access to WMS. This access is typically hard coded into the application, but additional applications that are available through the National Land and Water Information Service will provide users with the ability to add user-defined WMS to existing Web mapping applications.

Tools

Tools to plan for a sustainable agri-environment

The "Tools" section of the National Land and Water Information Service covers a wide area of functionality within the Web site and actually duplicates some functionality found under the "Maps" and "Data" section of the Web site. This duplication is intentional to allow maximum flexibility for a diverse user community as everybody approaches a task a little bit differently. In addition to approach, how a person describes and identifies with their respective task will be different from one user to another. For example, one person's "Tool" is another person's "Map".

There are three types of tools:

1. Stand-alone tools, which are not found anywhere else on the National Land and Water Information Service Web site. Tools such as these are not physically linked to a map and provide tabular information to a user. An example of this type of tool is the "Quality Farm Dugouts".
2. Stand-alone Calculator tools, which provide users an interface for entering their input to help calculate new information specific to the users’ needs; e.g., the cost to build a fence to corral livestock, or how long livestock could graze in an area.
3. Integrated Calculator tools, which replicate the functionality from type 2 above, but go a step further by providing the user input information required by the calculator through a Web mapping application. For example, if a user wanted to calculate the fencing cost listed in type 2 above, but didn’t know the length of the fence, a Web mapping application would allow the user to identify where the fence will be placed. The length value identified on screen through the Web mapping application is transferred automatically into the calculator tool.

Expertise

Find agri-environmental expertise

The "Expertise" section currently provides an overview of six areas where the National Land and Water Information Service is concentrating its efforts in service delivery. The expertise which is provided by staff from Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) addresses:

1. Land use - facilitating the integration of decision-support tools and information with the knowledge and expertise of agro-environmental issues
2. Soil - knowledge and expertise around the interpretation and analysis of soil data
3. Water - knowledge and expertise about surface and ground water quantity and quality
4. Climate - knowledge and expertise about weather and how it affects agricultural productivity
5. Biodiversity - knowledge and expertise about botany, mycology, entomology and habitat
6. Geomatics - knowledge and expertise about Geographic Information Systems (GIS) including data management, data analysis, remote sensing, and Internet Web mapping.

Additional information or questions on any of these topics should be directed through the "Feedback" section of the National Land and Water Information Service Web site.