Land Cover Classification Map for Cold Lake Oil Sands Region

13 land-use and land-cover classes are mapped for the Cold Lake oil sands area, derived from 2007 Landsat satellite imagery. The dataset, produced by the Government of Alberta, supports regional planning under the Lower Athabasca Regional Plan. It includes categories such as water bodies, various forest types, developed areas, and fire scars.

Use Cases

• Train a semantic segmentation model to identify 'coniferous forest', 'broad leaf forest', and 'mixed forest' classes from Landsat imagery.
• Analyze the spatial distribution of 'developed areas' and 'mixed developed areas' relative to 'water bodies' for environmental impact studies.
• Detect and monitor 'fire scar' regions over time by using this 2007 classification as a baseline.
• Assess land cover change by comparing this classification's 'shrub land', 'grassland', and 'agriculture areas' with more recent datasets.

Strengths

• Contains 13 distinct land cover classes enabling detailed landscape analysis.
• Covers a defined regional area (Townships 56 to 69, Ranges 1 to 11, W4M) relevant to oil sands monitoring.
• Derived from standardized Landsat imagery, providing a consistent spatial data source.

Limitations

• Single temporal snapshot from 2007, limiting analysis of recent land cover changes.
• Class '0 - unclassified' may represent areas of poor data quality or ambiguity.
• Spatial resolution is limited by the 30-meter pixel size of 2007 Landsat data.

Provenance

Source

Government of Alberta.

Collection Method

Derived from 2007 Landsat satellite imagery.

Time Range

2007.

Freshness

The underlying imagery is from 2007, though the dataset record was updated in March 2026.

Geography

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