Fertilizer Expense Index For Alberta Agricultural Areas

A geospatial index mapping the relative expense of fertilizer and lime across agricultural areas in Alberta. The data was created by the Government of Alberta in 2002 using ArcGIS to estimate agricultural impact on nutrient levels in water. It ranks expense values between 0 (lowest) and 1 (highest) by Soil Landscape of Canada polygon area.

Use Cases

• Estimate potential nutrient loading in surface and groundwater using the fertilizer expense index as a proxy.
• Analyze regional agricultural intensity by mapping the ranked expense values across SLC polygon areas.
• Identify areas of high fertilizer application for targeted environmental monitoring or stewardship programs.
• Use the expense index as a proxy indicator for relative crop production levels across the province.

Strengths

• Provides a province-wide geospatial coverage for Alberta's agricultural region.
• Data values are normalized on a ranked scale from 0 to 1 for comparative analysis.

Limitations

• Data is based on a 2002 creation date, making it temporally stale for current analysis.
• Underlying raw expense data and specific column definitions are unavailable.
• Data granularity is limited to the SLC polygon area level.

Provenance

Source

Government of Alberta

Collection Method

Created using ArcGIS; methodology details unspecified.

Time Range

2001 (referenced in title), created in 2002.

Freshness

null

Geography

Agricultural areas of Alberta, Canada.