Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada

The Crop Stress Index is the ratio of actual evapotranspiration (AET) to potential evapotranspiration (PET) express as: CSI = 1-(AET/PET) AET and PET are calculated within the Versatile Soil Moisture Budget (VSMB) model using temperature and precipitation data and a crop-specific...

The “Prairie Agricultural Landscapes (PAL)” datasets identify areas of the agricultural portions of the Canadian Prairies with similar land and water resources, land use and farming practices. They are represented by vector polygons. Based on selected attributes from the Soil Landscapes of...

Total soil moisture is the modelled amount of plant available water (mm) in the root zone of the soil. The value given is the amount calculated to be present on the modeled day of the product. Values are computed using the Versatile Soil Moisture Budget (VSMB)

Percent of normal soil moisture is the modelled amount of plant available water (mm) in the root zone of the soil, divided by the average amount that has historically been available on that day. This value is intended to provide users with a representation of conditions above or below normal as a...

The Blended Index (BI) is a model which employs multiple potential indicators of drought and excess moisture, such as the Palmer drought index, rolling precipitation amounts and soil moisture, and combines them into a weighted, normalized value between 0 and 100. The inputs and weights used in...

The Moisture Anomaly Index (Palmer-Z) is an estimate of the moisture difference from normal (a 30-year mean). It attempts to express conditions for the current month regardless of what may have occurred before the month in question.

Difference from normal soil moisture is the modelled amount of plant available water (mm) in the root zone of the soil, minus the average amount that has historically been available on that day. This value is intended to provide users with a representation of conditions above or below normal and...

The term "Palmer Drought Index" has been used collectively to represent multiple indices. This index is simply a water balance model which analyzes precipitation and temperature, and used as a tool to measure meteorological and hydrological drought across space and time. All versions of the...

The Versatile Soil Moisture Budget (VSMB) is a soil water budget model that is continuous and deterministic in nature and was developed by AAFC. It is based on the premise that the water available for plant growth is gained by precipitation or irrigation, and lost through evapotranspiration and...

The ‘Circa 1995 Landcover of the Prairies’dataset is a geospatial raster data layer portraying the rudimentaryland cover types of all grain-growing areas of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and northeastern British Columbia at a 30-metre resolution for the 1995 timeframe. It is the collection of...

A soil survey is an inventory of soils and their spatial distribution over a landscape. Soil survey reports contain two parts. The first part is a soil map or series of maps at a particular scale with coding for each soil. Soil survey reports also include a supporting document that contains...

Crop development stage in a numerical scale. All living organisms move from one stage of development to the next over time. For annual crops, it life cycle (growing season) completed within a year. Crop water use differs from one stage to another mostly due to the differences in the amount of...

This data set was compiled by AAFC from the historic yields of major crops as provided by Statistics Canada and provides support on estimates of crop yield and related statistics.