Alberta Landscape Connectivity Indicator for Watersheds, 2010-2021

Alberta's Landscape Connectivity indicator measures changes in connectivity for Upland Forest, Lowland Forest, and Grass-Shrub land cover types. The Equivalent Connected Area index was calculated for all HUC 8 watersheds in Alberta for 2010, 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021 using GIS layers from the Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Institute and Government of Alberta. It was jointly developed by Alberta Environment and Protected Areas and the Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Institute.

Use Cases

• Model habitat fragmentation based on land cover types and human footprint data
• Assess watershed-level environmental changes over time based on the 2010-2021 time series
• Evaluate forest harvest recovery impacts on landscape connectivity
• Integrate connectivity metrics with wildlife crossing locations for conservation planning

Strengths

• Provides connectivity values for three distinct land cover types and an aggregated value
• Calculated for all Hydrological Unit Code 8 watersheds in Alberta
• Includes data for five specific years: 2010, 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021
• Accounts for forest harvest recovery in connectivity calculations

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment

Provenance

Source

Alberta Environment and Protected Areas and the Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Institute

Collection Method

Calculated using four GIS layers: Human Footprint Inventories, Wall-to-Wall Vegetation Layer, wildlife crossing locations, and Hierarchical Watershed Boundaries.

Time Range

2010, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021

Freshness

Last updated 2026-04-17 14:45:42.576632; freshness should be verified

Geography

Alberta, Canada, specifically all HUC 8 watersheds