Status and Plan

Canada's major drainage areas In all, over 1150 drainage areas, or NHN Work Units, are necessary to cover the entire Canadian landmass. This NHN Work Unit coverage stretches offshore and up to the Canada/USA international boundary. From that number, about twenty cannot currently be created as NHN datasets since source data are missing for those. In such context the NHN national coverage is, for the time being, rather about 1130 drainage areas.

The NHN Implementation Strategy is actually realized by continously adding or updating NHN datasets on the GeoBase portal. This implementation is better described as follows:

First NHN National Coverage

Given available data sources, as previously described, the national coverage currently represents some 1130 drainage areas. This national coverage was realized as described below.

Status

October 1, 2007: Publication of 287 NHN drainage areas accounting for about 20% of the Canadian landmass, namely: the 246 NHN-CL4 Work Units or drainage areas produced by British Columbia; and the 41 NHN-CL4 Work Units located in Manitoba (28), Saskatchewan (2), Yukon (6) and Newfoundland-and-Labrador (5) produced under the initial production process from Natural Resources Canada.
March 20, 2008: Publication of 552 new NHN-CL1 and NHN-CL2 datasets in accordance with the new NHN Implementation Strategy, increasing the total number of available NHN datasets on the GeoBase portal to 839.
June 1, 2008: Publication of 63 new NHN-CL1 and NHN-CL2 datasets increasing the total number of available NHN datasets on the GeoBase portal to 902, accounting for about 70% of the Canadian landmass.
December 15, 2008: Publication of 140 new NHN-CL1 and NHN-CL2 datasets increasing the total number of available NHN datasets on the GeoBase portal to 1042, accounting for about 85% of the Canadian landmass.
May 15, 2009: Publication of 50 new NHN-CL1 and NHN-CL2 datasets increasing the total number of available NHN datasets on the GeoBase portal to 1092, accounting for more than 90% of the Canadian landmass. This publication provides all NHN datasets that have undergone a particular processing (special cases) as well as those for which source data have recently been updated. The particular processing referred to here affects only NHN-CL1 and NHN-CL2 datasets for which the automated processing have required an extra interactive processing phase.
December 10, 2009 - FIRST NATIONAL COVERAGE: Publication of 38 new NHN-CL1 (13) and NHN-CL2 (25) datasets increasing the total number of available NHN datasets on the GeoBase portal to 1130, and achieving the first NHN national coverage (see index map below). This publication notably provides NHN datasets issued from recent cartographic data production in the Hudson Bay low lands area and in northern Canada. On February 15, 2010, 4 new NHN-CL1 datasets were added to the first national coverage, increasing the total number of NHN datasets available to 1134.

Plan

Cartography of the Canadian North: Work is currently in progress, as a priority, to complete the Great Canadian North cartography over the next few years. As soon as these new data are produced and become available, corresponding NHN datasets will be produced and published in turn on the GeoBase portal.

	Available
	In production (publication in 2010)
	Unavailable (missing source data)

IMPORTANT NOTICE
Should you have a specific need for some NHN datasets to come, we encourage you to let us know as soon as possible by clicking on the following link: Submit your specific NHN datasets' need
Your need will be added to the NHN production planning and we will strive to satisfy it in the best possible time frame.

Provincial Data

Partnership agreements for NHN data production from provincial source data are currently being implemented with the following provinces:

Manitoba
Ontario
Quebec

Thus, more up-to-date and accurate NHN data produced from provincial source data should start to progressively replace NHN data made from federal source data as early as 2010.

Fusion with American Data - Transborder Drainage Areas

At the Canada/USA boundary, both countries respective hydrographic data must be fused to allow producing complete drainage areas located on both sides of the border. This fusion is to be made between Canada's NHN data and USA's NHD (National Hydrography Dataset) data. Discussions about this have taken place throughout 2008 and 2009 with representatives from the following organizations:

The work approach and methodology were defined in 2008 and 2009. Split between the Canadian and American partners, production of the transborder drainage areas has started in the fall of 2009 with the goal of completing it in 2010.