Description

This catalog contains annual 30 m spatial resolution snow dynamics metrics for each snow-year from 2018-2019 to 2024-2025 for all of Canada. We gather all Landsat and Sentinel-2 images collected over Canada and identify the status of each pixel observation on the image collection date: snow (and ice), non-snow (i.e., land, water), unclear (i.e., clouds, shadows). We built an algorithm to calculate snow cover metrics for each pixel during each winter: start date of the first (and biggest) snow period [startF, startB], end date of the last (and biggest) snow period [endL, endB], number of days with snow cover in total (or in the biggest snow period) [lengthT, lengthB], number of snow periods (i.e., separated times with multiple confirmed snow observations) [periods], and a status classification (e.g., continuous snow, snow free) [status]. We do not obtain a clear observation every day because of satellite orbit frequencies and clouds. This means that timing-based metrics are identified by the middle date between two clear observations, with uncertainty quantified as half the length of the gap (i.e., ± days) [startF_u, startB_u, endL_u, endB_u, lengthT_u, lengthB_u].

Resources

Name	Format	Description	Link
Snow Dynamics of Canada	WMS		https://datacube.services.geo.ca/ows/snow-dynamics?SERVICE=WMS&REQUEST=GetCapabilities
Annual 30 m snow dynamics - SpatioTemporal Asset Catalog (STAC) Application Programming Interface (API)	JSON		https://datacube.services.geo.ca/stac/api/search?collections=snow-dynamics-yearly
Snow Dynamics of Canada	WMS		https://datacube.services.geo.ca/wrapper/ramp/ogc/snow-dynamics?request=GetCapabilities&service=WMS&version=1.3.0&layers=snow-dynamics-yearly&legend_format=image%2Fpng&feature_info_type=text%2Fxml
Snow Dynamics of Canada	WMS		https://datacube.services.geo.ca/wrapper/ramp/ogc/snow-dynamics?request=GetCapabilities&service=WMS&version=1.3.0&layers=snow-dynamics-yearly&legend_format=image%2Fpng&feature_info_type=text%2Fxml
Scientific publication	PDF		https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isprsjprs.2026.01.032
User guide	PDF		https://ftp.maps.canada.ca/pub/nrcan_rncan/Remote-sensing_Teledetection/snow_dynamics_30m/HLS%20Snow%20Dynamics%20V1_1%203.pdf
Validation details	PDF		https://ftp.maps.canada.ca/pub/nrcan_rncan/Remote-sensing_Teledetection/snow_dynamics_30m/HLS_Snow_Dynamics_Validation1.pdf
Annual 30 m snow dynamics - SpatioTemporal Asset Catalog (STAC) browser	Unknown		https://radiantearth.github.io/stac-browser/#/external/datacube.services.geo.ca/stac/api/collections/snow-dynamics-yearly?.language=en

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