GIS Data Overview
About our Data
The Yukon Department of Environment maintains three broad categories of data:
- Departmental Adminstrative Boundaries
- created, owned, and maintained by Environment Yukon
- examples include Game Management Areas, Outfitting Concessions, Registered Trapping Concessions, and Conservation Officer Districts.
- Departmental Base or Framework Data
- value-added derivatives of National Topographic Data Base or VMap0 (formerly Digital Chart of the World)
- examples include Digital Elevation Models and Shaded Reliefs
- Extra-Departmental Data
- owned by other agencies
- created and maintained by Environment Yukon (we are the custodians of these data)
- Parks & Protected Areas and First Nation Traditional Territories (more coming).
Due to wide ranging analytic and cartographic requirements, we maintain digital topographic data at three scales:
- 1:1,000,000 VMap0 (formerly Digital Chart of the World or simply DCW)
- 1:250,000 National Topographic Data Base (NTDB)
- 1:50,000 National Topographic Data Base (NTDB)
Administrative boundaries have been compiled at 1:1,000,000 and 1:250,000 scales. Many administrative boundaries are defined by natural features which occur in the base data files (e.g. streams, roads). These boundaries were compiled by cloning the appropriate features to ensure a perfect correlation between administrative boundaries and the features defining them. Coverage names are prefixed with a "q" for 1:250,000 scale (quarter million) and an "m" for 1:1,000,000 scale (million). All spatial data on this site are in the Standard Yukon Albers Projection. They are comprised only of value-added information (e.g. Administrative Boundaries). You will have to contact the original author/copyright holders for access to the base data.
Data Quality
Every effort has been made to ensure the quality of the spatial data available from this site. Some errors, however, may have been missed. If you discover any problems please contact the Geomatics Developer/Administrator.
File Format
The downloadable files are in the ESRI Shapefile format. which are in turn compressed into a Zip archive. Specialized GIS software is needed to view shapefiles, e.g. ArcView and ArcInfo.