The Landscape Analysis and Applications Section (LAAS) at the Canadian Forest Service – Sault Ste. Marie is a multi-disciplinary group (6 – 12 staff) that applies and develops multi-scale modeling approaches to a wide variety of Natural Resource Management and Policy problems. The underlying theme or vision is the development of methods and data to deal with spatial aspects of resource management. This web page is intended to provide an overview of our major activities. As it develops it will include a hierarchy of project descriptions, maps, interactive mapping opportunities, data downloading and more sophisticated web-based spatial modeling.

• Climate Models: Regional, National and International
• Topographic Models: Development and Applications
• Species Modeling and Biodiversity Projects
• Canada´s Plant Hardiness Zones
• Forest Productivity
• Cost benefit modeling of Afforestation
• Economic Studies
• NatGRID
• Web publications of the LAAS
• Ontario Research Sites (ORS) Database

A major component of our work involves the application of leading edge technology and methods to characterize and model the biophysical environment (including Climate and Topographic models) and its relationship to forest species' distributions, abundance and productivity. We are extending this work across the country under the rubric of a project called NatGRID (National GeoReferenced Information for Decision-makers).