Land Cover Classification Raster for Cold Lake Oil Sands Region

Alberta's Cold Lake oil sands region is mapped with a 13-class land-use/land-cover raster derived from 2011 Landsat imagery. The dataset was created by the Government of Alberta to support science-based monitoring under the Lower Athabasca Regional Plan. It classifies terrain into categories including water bodies, forests, developed areas, agriculture, and fire scars.

Use Cases

• Analyze spatial distribution of land cover classes like 'coniferous forest' or 'developed areas' to assess ecosystem fragmentation.
• Monitor changes in land use over time by comparing the 2011 'fire scar' class with subsequent imagery.
• Model habitat suitability by using classes such as 'shrub land', 'grassland', and 'water bodies' as environmental variables.
• Assess the footprint of industrial activity by quantifying the area of 'exposed land/cut blocks/harvested areas' and 'transitional bare surfaces'.

Strengths

• Contains 13 distinct land cover classes for detailed analysis.
• Derived from authoritative Landsat satellite imagery.
• Covers a defined region (Townships 56-69, Ranges 1-11) relevant to oil sands monitoring.

Limitations

• Data is from a single year (2011), limiting temporal trend analysis.
• The 'unclassified' class (0) may represent areas of poor data quality or mixed signatures.
• Specific accuracy metrics for the classification are not provided.

Provenance

Source

Government of Alberta.

Collection Method

Derived from 2011 Landsat satellite imagery.

Time Range

2011

Freshness

null

Geography

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