Vegetation Recovery Classification from Landsat Imagery in Cold Lake Oil Sands

Annual Vegetation Recovery Classification Results in the Cold Lake Oil Sands Area is a geospatial dataset derived from 2005-2006 Landsat multispectral imagery. It classifies vegetation recovery into six land cover classes, including shrub land, grassland, and forest types. The Government of Alberta produced this data to support monitoring under the Lower Athabasca Regional Plan.

Use Cases

• Classify pixels into one of six land cover classes (shrub land, grassland, agricultural areas, coniferous forest, broadleaf forest, mixed forest) using spectral signatures from Landsat imagery.
• Analyze vegetation recovery patterns from anthropogenic disturbances like oil and gas infrastructure by comparing classified outputs from 2005 and 2006.
• Train a semantic segmentation model to identify coniferous, broadleaf, and mixed forest areas from multispectral image data.
• Map the spatial distribution of grassland and shrub land recovery in Township 56 to 69, Range 1 to 11, west of the 4th Meridian.

Strengths

• Data is derived from authoritative Landsat satellite imagery for two consecutive years (2005 and 2006).
• Classification scheme provides six distinct vegetation and land cover classes for analysis.
• Explicitly targets a defined geographic region under a specific regional environmental plan (LARP).

Limitations

• Dataset is temporally limited, covering only a two-year period (2005-2006).
• Specific sample size, spatial resolution, and accuracy metrics for the classification are not provided.
• Focus on a single oil sands region limits direct applicability to other geographic areas.

Provenance

Source

Government of Alberta.

Collection Method

Derived from Landsat multispectral imagery and Land Use and Land Cover (LULC) classification data.

Time Range

2005 to 2006.

Freshness

Data reflects conditions from 2005-2006, though metadata was updated in March 2026.

Geography

Cold Lake oil sands area, Alberta, Canada (Township 56 to 69, Range 1 to 11, west of the 4th Meridian).