Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada - Agriculture et Agroalimentaire Canada  Canada
 Français Contact Us Help Search Canada Site
AAFC Online Links Newsroom What's New Site Index
National Land and Water Information Service
Home  Location:   CanSIS

History of CanSIS

Historical Overview

The Land Resources Research Centre (LRRC) spent many years gathering and compiling data on Canada's land resources into the National Soils DataBase (NSDB) using ARC/INFO. The spatial data define the location of the major types of soil in Canada including some associated landscape features such as slope and rock outcrops. The non-spatial attributes comprise those characteristics that are relevant to a soil's biological productivity; that is its potential to grow plants, and indirectly to support animals. To a lesser extent, the characteristics are also relevant to how easily vehicles, animals or people can move across the soil; that is its trafficability. Where assessments of biological productivity or trafficability have actually been made, they also are included as part of the data in the system. For purposes of analysis and output, the data are frequently represented as maps, including lines, symbols and legends.

The NSDB is designed to be one layer in what constitutes a complete geographical information system. It deals with soil, and landscape features. It includes some climate, census, and land use data, collected and added as part of special projects.

The CanSIS system includes regional offices as well as Ottawa ( Figure 1 ). The central unit in Ottawa (the hub) acts as the principal source of system development and the central archive; it is the national repository of information collected on field surveys or created by land use analysis projects. Arranged around the hub, and connected to it like spokes of the wheel, are the regional staff which collect data during field inventories or create it through regional land evaluation projects. Overlapping most of the regional units are the provincial equivalents of CanSIS, some large, some small, some quite compatible, some considerably less so. What started, years ago, as a highly centralized system has since diversified as regional staff adopt technology that is compatible with provincial systems.

 Up until recently, the LRRC was the principal custodian of federal and joint federal-provincial soil map data in digital form (British Columbia formerly had a computer system for provincial data). With the development of commercial GIS software and, in particular, software suitable for implementation on microcomputers, many provinces are actively developing local GIS capability. There is a variety of regional GIS capability ranging from federal equipment with provincial support through joint ventures to provincial systems with federal support as well as individual agency systems.

Historical Development

By 1971, the soil survey discipline had developed a complete methodology, organized the science with a taxonomy system for classifying soils and was actively working to characterize the land resources of Canada with emphasis on the agricultural regions. The quantities of data had become so large that the National Committee on Soil Survey recommended that they be organized and stored within a computerized system.

Starting in 1972, CanSIS was developed by LRRC of the Research Branch of Agriculture Canada. From 1975 to 1986 it was run with computer programs written by the Centre's own computer scientists. Early on, as a world leader in the field, the system could be modified and developed as necessary. Later, as other agencies developed their own systems, often based on commercial GIS software, it became difficult to exchange information. The Centre's original custom designed software was not compatible with the principal types of commercial software that were becoming ubiquitous, and it was no longer cost-effective to maintain the CanSIS software.

Prior to 1986 the CanSIS system (MacDonald and Kloosterman, 1984) had the following groups of files:

The information contained in these files has either been transferred to the new files, as in the case of the cartographic data, or has been stored as it stands. The three files that have been stored (Detail, Soil Management, and Wetlands) are still accessible but will not be developed further. No further additions of data are planned to these files as they exist in Ottawa; individual regions have been sent copies of the data and may choose to expand their local versions of the files.

In 1986, the Centre purchased commercial ARC/INFO software from Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI), Toronto, Canada. This software is used by many other federal and provincial agencies across Canada that deal with spatial environmental information. The transfer of the original CanSIS system to this commercial software has required not only a transposition of the fundamental data, but also a substantial revision of the structure of the system itself. The old manuals and operating procedures became obsolete.

In 1993, the system was moved to HP Workstations, but ARC/INFO was retained as the software. A new archiving system was created. Starting in 1994, documentation was converted to hypertext, and CanSIS became one of the first federal sites on the Internet. In 1996, the initial version of the Soil Landscapes of Canada was completed. In the same year, the first World Wide Web mapping applications were developed. The NSDB content and data structures continue to evolve as dictated by project requirements.
1992, with updates by CANSIS Staff

Date Modified: Important Notices

[ Français | Contact Us | Help | Search | Canada Site ]
[ AAFC Online | Links | Newsroom | What's New | Site Index ]