Land Use Classification Map for Alberta Energy Regulation Pilot

Thirteen distinct land cover classes, including coniferous forest, water bodies, and developed areas, are mapped across a 2005 Landsat image of Alberta. The Alberta Energy Regulator created this dataset to establish a baseline for assessing surface impacts from energy exploration. It covers a specific pilot area extending from Township 52 to 70, encompassing several towns.

Use Cases

• Train a semantic segmentation model to identify 'coniferous forest', 'broadleaf forest', and 'mixed forest' classes from multispectral Landsat imagery.
• Analyze the proximity of 'developed areas' or 'mixed developed areas' to 'water bodies' for environmental impact assessments.
• Use the 'exposed land/cut blocks/harvested areas' class as a baseline to quantify changes in land cover over time.
• Assess the distribution of 'agriculture areas' versus 'shrub land' within the regulated pilot zone for land management planning.

Strengths

• Classification scheme contains 13 specific land cover and land use categories.
• Spatial coverage is defined by specific township and range coordinates within Alberta.

Limitations

• Data is derived from a single year (2005), making it temporally static and potentially outdated for current analysis.
• The underlying image resolution and classification accuracy metrics are not provided.

Provenance

Source

Government of Alberta

Collection Method

Derived from 2005 Landsat multispectral imagery.

Time Range

2005

Freshness

null

Geography

Alberta, Canada, covering townships 52 to 70, including Edson, Fox Creek, Mayerthorpe, Whitecourt, Swan Hills, and Valleyview.