Digital elevation data consists of an ordered array of ground elevations sampled at regular intervals over each grid area. Aside from estimating point elevations, digital elevation has a variety of applications, including terrain modeling, line of sight analysis, water flow and flooding analysis, and many others.
In this dataset, spacing between elevation values varies with latitude. The values for East/West range from 0.75 to 3 arc seconds, or 8 to 17 metres. Spacing is always 0.75 arc seconds or about 23 metres for North/South.
The data are provided in separate tiles according to the Canadian National Topographic System (1:50,000) map boundaries. For example, the local area appears as four map sheets: 30M/4, 30M/5, 40P/1 and 40P/8, and each sheet is further divided into an Eastern and a Western tile. Each tile contains 1201 elevation points x 1201 elevation points, for a total of 1,442,401 elevation points. A lower resolution dataset (1:250,000) is also available, but both datasets provide complete coverage of Canada.
For more recent Digital Elevation Data, see the CDEM and CDSM datasets, also available through Natural Resources Canada at the link below.
Other Keywords: DEM, Digital Elevation Model
Canadian Digital Elevation Data (CDED) can be downloaded from Natural Resources Canada (archived).
