The Canadian Forest Service (CFS) has begun development of the National Forest Information System (NFIS) as part of a forest resources information infrastructure. Integration and accessibility of forest resources information is key to enhancing Canada's capability to monitor sustainable forest management. Seed funding for a pilot implementation of NFIS was obtained through CGDI under the WINS Initiative of Natural Resources Canada (NRCan). Work on the NFIS pilot was completed March 31, 1999.

The NFIS consists of two key components, each deployed over the Web: (1) tools and services for creation and search of metadata content and (2) spatially-enabled data warehouse technology for storage and retrieval of data from large, possibly distributed, holdings. The metadata infrastructure is based on the USGS suite of tools including mp and the Isite Z39.50 server plus custom tools developed in-house for streamlining the data-entry process. The spatial data warehouse implementation is based on CubeWerx' CubeSTOR running over Oracle 8. Work has begun on the application of the Compusult MetaManager Z-server for delivery of data warehouse metacontent. Further details on each of these initiatives are available in Bakewell [GIS99] and Morrison [GIS99] or by visiting the NFIS Web site at:

Please note the following Web requirements: A minimum of Netscape 4.5 or Internet Explorer 5 is required for Web Map browsing. Access to parts of the Web site are password-protected. When prompted, use 

A collection of links to common spatial queries has been created at the following URL:

Following these links will invoke the CubeWerx Web Map utility on a variety of data products that have been loaded into CubeSTOR as well as some 3D visualization work that CFS has started based on the 3sec DEM of Canada developed by CFS/Great Lakes under contract to the National Topographic Service. More than 20 geospatial data holdings have been loaded to date representing over 20 GB of raw source data on themes such as protected areas, biogeoclimatic zones, detailed forest inventory polygons, high-resolution digital orthophotography, land classification from satellite imagery and others.

Continuing Work

Development of NFIS technical infrastructure continues in parallel with the further development of national forest resources data holdings. The following represent some of the themes that are being considered for future development. This list represents some long-term objectives; those items that have been highlighted in BOLD are considered high priority.

Data extract from CubeSTOR data warehouse

• OGDI implementation of CubeSTOR to shapefile (Solaris implementation)
• native CubeSTOR implementation of CubeSTOR to GRID-ASCII
• develop Safe Software FME mappings for common extract paths
• extract cell-coverage of polygon data to a common reference grid

• Enhance user interface (e.g., legend, object selection, zoom-to-selected-feature, zoom-to-named-feature, such as mapsheet, other navigation approaches)
• Implement security and performance model for selective data access control
• Develop custom Web Map interfaces targeted at key applications (e.g., Forest Inventory, Criteria & Indicators of Sustainable Development, etc.)
• Add 3D visualization of data using VRML plugins
• Add user-defined query based on non-spatial attributes. For example: show forest cover polygons where species_1 = 'PINE' and ….
• Add update capability for non-spatial attributes. For example: for currently selected object, update name = 'Salmon River.'
• Allow window-queries returning feature sets (e.g., tabular presentation of non-spatial attributes for multiple records)
• Add color-by-number. For example: "color forest cover polygons red where disturbance = 'BURNED' and disturbance_year > 1990."
• Add user-defined symbology (e.g., point icons, line type/weight, etc.)
• Add attribute-driven text labelling of spatial features
• Add network display capability (e.g., show the down-stream lines from a selected starting point); see Data Warehouse Enhancements below
• Support value queries of raster cells
• Support persistent user-environments for maintaining preferences such as color maps, comments, etc.

• spatial query operations implemented inside CubeSTOR (currently only limited spatial query is supported internally - bounding box, and cell intersection). Possible operations include: within, adjacent-to, intersecting, distance-from, buffering, etc.
• add support for 3D (possibly > 3D) lines and polygons
• add support for multiple geometries in the same spatial record
• add network load capability; currently can implement Arc/Info style network representation (i.e., to- and from-node attributes)

• implementation of similarity metrics (like McKenney's Seedware Tool, but generalized to support user-defined attribute lists). For example: "show all polygons similar to the selected polygon with respect to attributes [A,C,H]." Several similarity metrics would be predefined.
• Support association of user-defined query procedures with selected spatial features.
• Implement spatial histograms
• Extract slope/aspect from DEM to new raster theme

• Development of a Data Entry/Query Wizard for creation of application-specific metadata management tools. FGDC or ISO TC211 standard metadata content would be exported from the tool, but the tool itself would support richer representation capabilities than are intrinsic to the metadata standards.
• Deployment of data warehouse metadata via MetaManager
• Implementation of Data/Entry/QueryTool for data warehouse content

• Vegetation classification
• National forest ecosystem classification
• Protected areas
• CFS research plots and associated metadata
• Land ownership and jurisdiction classifications
• Planimetry
• Geology, surficial and bedrock
• Geomorphology
• Soil classification
• Slope, aspect and elevation
• Climate