Canadian Wetland Inventory Map Version 3A (CWIM3A)

The third generation of high resolution 10-m wetland inventory map of Canada, covering an approximate area of one billion hectares, was generated using multi-year (2016-2020), multi-source imagery (Sentinel-1, Sentinel-2, ALOS PALSAR-2, and SRTM) Earth Observation (EO) data as well as environmental features. Over 8800 wetland polygons were processed within an object-based random forest classification scheme on the Google Earth Engine cloud computing platform. The average overall accuracy of 90.5% is an increase of 4.7% over CWIM2.

CWIM Versions:

The Canadian Wetland Inventory Map (CWIM) is an extension of work started at Memorial University to produce a Newfoundland and Labrador wetland inventory during 2015-2018 which was significantly funded by Environment and Climate Change Canada. The first national CWIM was produced 2018-2019 as a collaboration between Memorial University, C-CORE, and Natural Resources Canada. Dr. Brian Brisco was instrumental in connecting ground truth from multiple sources to the project and providing guidance. Version 2 was produced in 2020 which included more training data and processing by Canada’s ecozones rather than provinces to take advantage of the commonality of landscape ecological features within ecozones to improve the accuracy. Version 3 produced in 2021 continued adding more data sources to further improve accuracy specifically an overestimation of wetland area as well as introducing a confidence map. Version 3A completed in 2022 updates only the arctic ecozones due to their relatively lower accuracy and added hydro-physiographic data layers. Currently work is underway to create a northern circumpolar wetland inventory map to be published in 2025.

Paper on Newfoundland and Labrador Wetland Inventory:

Mahdianpari, M.; Salehi, B.; Mohammadimanesh, F.; Homayouni, S.; Gill, E. The First Wetland Inventory Map of Newfoundland at a Spatial Resolution of 10 m Using Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 Data on the Google Earth Engine Cloud Computing Platform. Remote Sens. 2019, 11, 43. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs11010043

Paper on CWIM1:

Mahdianpari, M., Salehi, B., Mohammadimanesh, F., Brisco, B., Homayouni, S., Gill, E., … Bourgeau-Chavez, L. (2020). Big Data for a Big Country: The First Generation of Canadian Wetland Inventory Map at a Spatial Resolution of 10-m Using Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 Data on the Google Earth Engine Cloud Computing Platform. Canadian Journal of Remote Sensing, 46(1), 15–33. https://doi.org/10.1080/07038992.2019.1711366

Paper on CWIM2:

Mahdianpari, M., Brisco, B., Granger, J. E., Mohammadimanesh, F., Salehi, B., Banks, S., … Weng, Q. (2020). The Second Generation Canadian Wetland Inventory Map at 10 Meters Resolution Using Google Earth Engine. Canadian Journal of Remote Sensing, 46(3), 360–375. https://doi.org/10.1080/07038992.2020.1802584

Paper on CWIM3:

M. Mahdianpari et al., "The Third Generation of Pan-Canadian Wetland Map at 10 m Resolution Using Multisource Earth Observation Data on Cloud Computing Platform," in IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing, vol. 14, pp. 8789-8803, 2021, doi: 10.1109/JSTARS.2021.3105645.

Paper on Arctic ecoregion enhancement for CWIM3A:

Michael Merchant, et al., ”Leveraging google earth engine cloud computing for large-scale arctic wetland mapping,” in International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation, vol. 125, 2023, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jag.2023.103589.

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Last Updated October 20, 2025, 02:52 (UTC)
Created October 20, 2025, 02:52 (UTC)
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Imagery Base Maps Earth Cover
Title
Title for the Dataset.
Canadian Wetland Inventory Map Version 3A (CWIM3A)
Description
A description of the dataset.

The third generation of high resolution 10-m wetland inventory map of Canada, covering an approximate area of one billion hectares, was generated using multi-year (2016-2020), multi-source imagery (Sentinel-1, Sentinel-2, ALOS PALSAR-2, and SRTM) Earth Observation (EO) data as well as environmental features. Over 8800 wetland polygons were processed within an object-based random forest classification scheme on the Google Earth Engine cloud computing platform. The average overall accuracy of 90.5% is an increase of 4.7% over CWIM2.

CWIM Versions:

The Canadian Wetland Inventory Map (CWIM) is an extension of work started at Memorial University to produce a Newfoundland and Labrador wetland inventory during 2015-2018 which was significantly funded by Environment and Climate Change Canada. The first national CWIM was produced 2018-2019 as a collaboration between Memorial University, C-CORE, and Natural Resources Canada. Dr. Brian Brisco was instrumental in connecting ground truth from multiple sources to the project and providing guidance. Version 2 was produced in 2020 which included more training data and processing by Canada’s ecozones rather than provinces to take advantage of the commonality of landscape ecological features within ecozones to improve the accuracy. Version 3 produced in 2021 continued adding more data sources to further improve accuracy specifically an overestimation of wetland area as well as introducing a confidence map. Version 3A completed in 2022 updates only the arctic ecozones due to their relatively lower accuracy and added hydro-physiographic data layers. Currently work is underway to create a northern circumpolar wetland inventory map to be published in 2025.

Paper on Newfoundland and Labrador Wetland Inventory:

Mahdianpari, M.; Salehi, B.; Mohammadimanesh, F.; Homayouni, S.; Gill, E. The First Wetland Inventory Map of Newfoundland at a Spatial Resolution of 10 m Using Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 Data on the Google Earth Engine Cloud Computing Platform. Remote Sens. 2019, 11, 43. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs11010043

Paper on CWIM1:

Mahdianpari, M., Salehi, B., Mohammadimanesh, F., Brisco, B., Homayouni, S., Gill, E., … Bourgeau-Chavez, L. (2020). Big Data for a Big Country: The First Generation of Canadian Wetland Inventory Map at a Spatial Resolution of 10-m Using Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 Data on the Google Earth Engine Cloud Computing Platform. Canadian Journal of Remote Sensing, 46(1), 15–33. https://doi.org/10.1080/07038992.2019.1711366

Paper on CWIM2:

Mahdianpari, M., Brisco, B., Granger, J. E., Mohammadimanesh, F., Salehi, B., Banks, S., … Weng, Q. (2020). The Second Generation Canadian Wetland Inventory Map at 10 Meters Resolution Using Google Earth Engine. Canadian Journal of Remote Sensing, 46(3), 360–375. https://doi.org/10.1080/07038992.2020.1802584

Paper on CWIM3:

M. Mahdianpari et al., "The Third Generation of Pan-Canadian Wetland Map at 10 m Resolution Using Multisource Earth Observation Data on Cloud Computing Platform," in IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing, vol. 14, pp. 8789-8803, 2021, doi: 10.1109/JSTARS.2021.3105645.

Paper on Arctic ecoregion enhancement for CWIM3A:

Michael Merchant, et al., ”Leveraging google earth engine cloud computing for large-scale arctic wetland mapping,” in International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation, vol. 125, 2023, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jag.2023.103589.
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2024-06-01
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Open Government Licence - Canada
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https://open.canada.ca/data/en/dataset/87127901-bd6d-46de-9142-e1362d980174
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Natural Resources Canada | Ressources naturelles Canada
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[email protected]
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