Historical Forest Inventory: Broad-Scale Land Classification Maps, 1949-1956

1949 to 1956 broad-scale forest inventory maps covering publicly owned forested lands in Alberta, excluding Indian lands, national parks, and the Rocky Mountains Forest Reserve. Produced by the Government of Alberta through aerial photo interpretation, the maps classify land as productive, potentially productive, or non-productive, with productive forest further categorized by cover types like crown density, height, and species. The inventory was used to define lands suitable for agriculture, determine timber harvest levels, and plan forest protection and industrial development.

Use Cases

• Analyze historical land suitability for agriculture based on the productive/potentially productive/non-productive classification.
• Study historical forest cover composition based on the described cover types including crown density, height, and tree species.
• Map historical areas of disturbance (burned, harvested) based on the identification of potentially productive land.
• Assess historical planning for timber harvest and industrial development based on the stated inventory purpose.

Strengths

• Provides a historical baseline from a defined time period (1949-1956).
• Covers a broad geographic area (all publicly owned forested lands in Alberta, except specified exclusions).
• Classification system is described, including productive, potentially productive, and non-productive land categories.

Limitations

• Description metadata is limited; actual data quality requires manual inspection after download.
• The maps are not available as geo-referenced rectified images or GIS-ready data, limiting digital analysis.
• No ages or site classes are associated with the polygons, and the minimum polygon size was 65 ha, which may limit granularity.

Provenance

Source

Government of Alberta

Collection Method

Aerial photo interpretation

Time Range

1949-1956

Geography

Alberta, Canada (publicly owned forested lands, excluding Indian lands, national parks, Rocky Mountains Forest Reserve)