Anthropogenic Footprints In Cold Lake Oil Sands Area 2005-2013

A compilation of developed and mixed developed footprint classes from 2005 to 2013 Landsat imagery provides a baseline for monitoring surface infrastructure impacts. This geospatial dataset was created by the Alberta Geological Survey and published by the Government of Alberta. It supports the Lower Athabasca Regional Plan's objective to balance oil sands development with ecosystem health.

Use Cases

• Analyze the expansion of developed footprint classes over the 2005-2013 period to quantify land-use change.
• Use the mixed developed footprint polygons as a baseline layer for cumulative effects assessment models.
• Integrate the anthropogenic footprints shapefile with other geospatial data to plan surface infrastructure and mitigate environmental impacts.

Strengths

• Data spans an 8-year time range from 2005 to 2013.
• Derived from authoritative land-use/land-cover classifications published by Alberta Geological Survey.
• Provides a defined baseline for planning and monitoring as part of a formal regional plan (LARP).

Limitations

• Specific row count, column details, and spatial resolution are not provided.
• Data is temporally stale, ending in 2013, and may not reflect recent changes.
• Geographic scope is limited to a specific area (Twp. 56 to 69, Rge. 1 to 11, W 4th Mer.).

Provenance

Source

Government of Alberta | Gouvernement de l'Alberta

Collection Method

Extracted from land-use/land-cover classifications of Landsat imagery.

Time Range

2005 to 2013

Freshness

The dataset metadata was last updated in March 2026, but the underlying data covers up to 2013.

Geography

Cold Lake Oil Sands area, Alberta, Canada (Twp. 56 to 69, Rge. 1 to 11, W 4th Mer.)