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Guide for Finding Manitoba Geographic Data

Canadian Data – Guide for Finding Manitoba Geographic Data

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Cartoonish looking Manitoba map

Guide for Finding Manitoba Geographic Data

Manitoba sits at the heart of Canada, a prairie province bounded by Saskatchewan to the west, Ontario to the east, Nunavut to the north, Hudson Bay to the northeast, and the United States to the south. The province is famous for big skies and bigger waters, and contains more than 100,000 lakes, including Lake Winnipeg, one of the largest inland freshwater bodies.

It spans a total area of about 647,800 km², with substantial portions of the province within boreal forest and lake country as well as the open Interior Plains. It also lies near the longitudinal centre of Canada, an orientation that has shaped its role as a mid‑continent hub. With over 1,342,000 residents and a population density of roughly 2.5 people per km², it reflects a landscape where vibrant urban areas give way quickly to vast agricultural, forested, and lake‑studded rural regions.

For anyone working with GIS, Manitoba offers a wealth of trustworthy, easy‑to‑use reliable geographic data (you just need to know where to look).The Province’s ecosystem blends a strong open‑data hub with national repositories and a handful of specialized portals.

  • Data MB, Manitoba’s official geoportal aggregates and hosts authoritative layers, maps and web services across themes, from boundaries to environment (under the Manitoba Open Data Licence). It’s built for exploring, previewing, and downloading current provincial datasets in one place.
  • For conservation context that crosses jurisdictions, Canada’s Protected and Conserved Areas Database (CPCAD) provides national coverage (including Manitoba) via REST and WMS services. (Open Government Licence)
  • Planning is unusually accessible thanks to the Manitoba Zoning By‑Laws consolidated provincial layer, while infrastructure and corridor mapping are discoverable through the Manitoba Hydro GIS Portal.
  • For historic or niche resources, the Manitoba GIS Map Gallery and the Manitoba Land Initiative provide legacy geoscience and mapping products that remain useful.
  • For precise positioning and survey control, practitioners can obtain station coordinates and descriptions from Canadian Geodetic Control Networks
  • and for wetlands there’s the national Canadian Wetland Inventory Map (CWIM3A, 10 m) provides province‑wide ecological context.

Together, these resources make Manitoba a geographic data‑rich Province for both professional analysts and curious residents. More details on data specifics are included below.  With these anchor data resources, Data MB for provincial layers, CPCAD and National Resources Canada for national context, Hydro’s portal for corridors, Canadian Geodetic / MSRN for control, and the province‑wide zoning layer, you will cover most Manitoba mapping needs from desktop analysis to field planning, confidently and efficiently. So start downloading some Manitoba Geographic Data, fire up your GIS, and start creating some great geospatial related maps and projects.

Manitoba Geographic Data Sources

Data MB – Manitoba Data Catalogue

Data MB is Manitoba’s authoritative portal to explore, preview, and download provincial geospatial open data (feature layers, web maps, services) under the Manitoba Open Data Licence. You can search by theme and jump into item pages (metadata, REST services). It provides access to a wide range of sectors, making it an entry points for statistical, administrative, and geospatial information in Manitoba. The catalogue is designed to support transparency, evidence‑based decision‑making, and reuse of government‑produced data.

Data MB - Manitoba Data Catalogue

  • Administrative boundaries – e.g., MUNICIPALITY (incorporated municipal boundaries) as a feature layer [municipal boundaries]
  • Property / parcels (assessment) – e.g., Boundary geometry for all of the assessed property within the Province [geoportal.gov.mb.ca]
  • Transportation networks – e.g., Manitoba Road Network  and the Highway Inventory  [geoportal.gov.mb.ca],
  • Hydrography & water resources – e.g., Manitoba Waterbody Data [geoportal.gov.mb.ca],
  • Soils & agriculture – e.g., Soil Survey Manitoba  [geoportal.gov.mb.ca]
  • Plus many more …

Most items are delivered as ArcGIS REST feature services (sometimes with map services, vector tiles, and downloadable files). For instance, the Manitoba Parks page lists a ready‑to‑use FeatureServer you can paste into QGIS → ArcGIS Feature Server or ArcGIS Pro → Add Data From Path.

For your Manitoba open data, the first place to start should be https://geoportal.gov.mb.ca

Download Canadian Geospatial Data

Know of any Manitoba Geographic Data sources that perhaps we missed?

Our team will continue to add to this page as we continue to discover places that offer Manitoba Geographic Data, we encourage the geospatial community to help out and share any resources that may be missing from the page, as well as report any dead links. Government organizations (at all levels) are notorious for often changing web pages or sites without providing re-directs.

Manitoba Land Initiative

Manitoba Land Initiative – Great source for geo-spatial information from the Government of Manitoba, intended for both the GIS expert and the decision maker allowing on-line access to the MLI corporate land data warehouse. Note: Users need to be registered but it is free to register

https://mli.gov.mb.ca/

Manitoba Geoscience – Maps at various scales portraying the geology, geophysics, geochronology and mineral occurrences for Manitoba (also includes downloadable geophysical datasets) https://www.manitoba.ca/iem/geo/gis/index.html

Manitoba Assessment Online provides both the public and subscribers access to property assessment information. https://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=2c09ffc330684c7a9a7ff1065ee6859b

Winnipeg, Manitoba – City of Winnipeg maps, aerial photos and data https://www.winnipeg.ca/interhom/maps/

The Lake Winnipeg Basin Information Network (LWBIN) Data Hub http://130.179.67.140/dataset The Lake Winnipeg Basin geography spans across four Canadian Provinces and four American States. The LWBIN was originally developed by Environment Canada as part of Canada’s Action Plan on clean water. It currently lists over 50 data sets.

Wetlands

Protected & Conserved Areas

  • Manitoba Parks – Provincial parks & park reserve; authoritative boundaries & park classes [geoportal.gov.mb.ca]
  • CPCAD (Canadian Protected & Conserved Areas Database, ECCC): single national source including Manitoba [canada.ca]
  • Lake Winnipeg Data Stream  [lakewinnip…astream.ca]

Transmission Corridors & Utility

Geodetic Control (Benchmarks & Reference Frames)

    • Passive Control Networks: official station descriptions & coordinates for CBN / HP3D / vertical & horizontal control, with CSV/KML/PDF exports. [webapp.csrs-scrs.nrcan-rncan.gc.ca]
    • MSRN (Manitoba Spatial Reference Network)  provincial control listings (NAD83(CSRS) Epoch 2010.0; CGVD28/CGVD2013) — invaluable for legacy plan tie‑ins. [gov.mb.ca]

Zoning & Land Use

    • Manitoba Zoning By‑Laws (province‑wide consolidated polygon layer of adopted municipal zoning; rolling updates with by‑law numbers and amendments).  [geoportal.gov.mb.ca]
    • Winnipeg Metropolitan Region [data.winni…oregion.ca]
    • Red River Planning District (East St. Paul, West St. Paul, St. Andrews, St. Clements, Selkirk, Dunnottar)

Municipal open‑data portals

  • City of Winnipeg — Open Data Portal (Socrata)
    • Full open‑data catalogue with a Maps section for geospatial layers (parcels, neighbourhoods, wards, addresses, etc.), plus APIs and developer docs. [data.winnipeg.ca]
  • City of Brandon — Open Government / Open Data

Municipal Map Viewers

These sites also provide a variety of interactive maps and some layer downloads. They are useful for parcels, zoning, services references, even they do not feature a full catalogue.

Manitoba Historical Maps - Manitoba Road map 1939

Geospatial Manitoba Imagery

If online aerial imagery service fits into your project, then how about downloading some of the high‑resolution aerial imagery collected in regions around Manitoba.

  • Manitoba Land Initiative provides digital LandSat 7 and aerial colour Orthos in .SID format for several regions in Manitoba including:
    • the Capital Region
    • Nickel Belt
    • Municipality of Blanshard (North & South)
    • Lake St. Martin
    • Municipality of North Cypress
    • Municipality of North Norfolk
    • Municipality of Park North
    • Southern Manitoba
    • Upper Assiniboine watersheds
    • Vermillion River watershed
    • and more … See the table of tables listed on https://mli.gov.mb.ca/ortho/index.html
  • City of Winnipeg 2021 Orthographic Photography in ECW formats [data.winnipeg.ca]
  • City of Winnipeg 2024 Orthographic Photography in ECW formats [data.winnipeg.ca]
  • Historic Winnipeg Region are available from  [mli.gov.mb.ca]
  • Digital Ortho Image (DOI) provincewide program – see the details specified on [manitoba.ca]
  • OpenAerialMap [openaerialmap.org]
  • National Air Photo Library National Air Photo Library – Natural Resources Canada
  • Sentinel‑2 (Copernicus) – 10–20 m optical imagery [copernicus.eu]

Manitoba Lidar data

If you need LAS/LAZ point clouds, start with City of Winnipeg (point cloud tiles) and Manitoba Land Initiative (some projects include LAS; although most provide lidar DEM/contours). If you need ready‑to‑use rasters, HRDEM (DTM/DSM at 1–2 m) gives broad Manitoba coverage where Lidar was integrated.

Manitoba LiDAR Tracker

1897 Manitoba Map

Manitoba Historic Maps

More historical Maps of Manitoba see https://canadiangis.com/historical-maps-manitoba.php

This Guide for Finding Manitoba Geographic Data has been created to help showcase the many great places to find Manitoba geospatial data.

[Page last updated: March, 2026]

Know of any Manitoba Geographic Data sources that perhaps we missed?

Our team will continue to add to this page as we continue to discover places that offer Manitoba Geographic Data, we encourage the geospatial community to help out and share any resources that may be missing from the page, as well as report any dead links. Government organizations (at all levels) are notorious for often changing web pages or sites without providing re-directs.

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Comprehensive Guide for Finding Manitoba Geographic Data - Manitoba LiDAR Tracker

Comprehensive Guide for Finding Manitoba Geographic Data

Manitoba sits at the heart of Canada, a prairie province bounded by Saskatchewan to the west, Ontario to the east, and Nunavut to the north. It is famous for big skies and bigger waters, and contains more than 100,000 lakes, including Lake Winnipeg, one of the largest inland freshwater bodies. For anyone working with GIS, Manitoba offers a wealth of trustworthy, easy‑to‑use reliable geographic data (you just need to know where to look).The Province’s ecosystem blends a strong open‑data hub with national repositories and a handful of specialized portals. Check out our Comprehensive Guide for Finding Manitoba Geographic Data …

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