Vegetation Recovery Classification from Landsat Imagery in Alberta Oil Sands

Alberta's Cold Lake oil sands region contains this dataset of vegetation recovery from 2010 to 2011. It was produced by the Government of Alberta using Landsat multispectral imagery and classifies land cover into six categories. The data supports the Lower Athabasca Regional Plan's objective to monitor cumulative environmental effects.

Use Cases

• Analyze vegetation recovery trends by comparing the classified 2010 and 2011 shrub land, grassland, and forest cover classes.
• Assess the spatial extent of anthropogenic disturbance and subsequent recovery using the six land cover classification categories.
• Model the relationship between infrastructure development and land cover change by overlaying the classified forest and agricultural area data with disturbance maps.

Strengths

• Data is derived from Landsat multispectral imagery, a standardized and widely used source.
• Provides a clear classification scheme with six distinct land cover classes.

Limitations

• The temporal coverage is limited to a two-year period (2010-2011).
• The specific spatial resolution, row count, and file sizes are unknown.
• Data is over a decade old, limiting analysis of recent recovery trends.

Provenance

Source

Government of Alberta

Collection Method

Produced from Landsat multispectral imagery for 2010 and 2011 and Land Use and Land Cover classification data from 2011.

Time Range

2010-2011

Freshness

null

Geography

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