High-Resolution Canopy Height and Cover of Vancouver Island, Canada

This archive provides four high-resolution (10-m) datasets to support reproducibility of the analyses presented in “The Last Giants: Big-Tree Forests Are a Critical Conservation Gap in Canada’s Coastal Temperate Rainforests” (Barros et al., in preparation): i) Canopy Height (m); ii) Canopy Cover (%); iii) Forest Cover, which is a binary map delineating forested areas with cnaopy height greater than 5, cover greatern than 10%, and patch area greater than 0.5ha; iv) Big-Tree Forest Map, representing the top 5% tallest canopies. These datasets were generated using a combination of airborne LiDAR, Sentinel satellite imagery, and deep learning-based modelling. They provide the spatial foundation for identifying big-tree forests and informing conservation planning and policy. All data are openly available for reuse, replication, and further ecological or conservation research.