Mapped winter road connections to remote First Nations communities in Canada 2022-2023, using open data sources and satellite imagery

This dataset consists of shapefile outlines of winter roads and ice roads in Canada, verified for the 2022-2023 winter road season. It focuses on the public winter roads leading to remote First Nations communities which have no permanent land access. The line data also includes private winter roads, community-built winter roads where information is available, and feeder roads connecting to the permanent road network. First Nations communities connected solely by winter roads are included as point locations. Their local roads were likewise verified, updated, or newly digitised if not included in Canada''s National Road Network (NRN) data. Features were traced by hand and information was extracted from Canada''''s NRN open datasets and then modified using Esri Imagery Basemap, Planet Labs and provincial, municipal and federal information. This dataset aims to provide a temporally and spatially consistent record of varying provincial datasets to support respective infrastructure departments and environmental research of surface and climatic conditions surrounding winter roads. The dataset was produced and funded through a NERC QUADRAT DTP studentship (NE/S007377/1).