Cold Lake Oil Sands Area Quality Evaluation from 2006 Landsat Imagery

A quality evaluation dataset derived from 2006 Landsat imagery for the Cold Lake oil sands area in Alberta, Canada. It identifies pixels potentially misclassified due to sensor noise, cloud, haze, or cloud shadow, marking them as 'bad pixels'. The dataset was produced by the Government of Alberta to support science-based environmental monitoring under the Lower Athabasca Regional Plan.

Use Cases

• Filter out 'bad pixels' flagged with value '1' from land cover classification maps derived from the 2006 Landsat imagery.
• Assess the impact of atmospheric conditions like cloud and haze on land-use classification accuracy within Townships 56 to 69, Ranges 1 to 11.
• Benchmark and improve image preprocessing algorithms by analyzing the spatial distribution of sensor noise artifacts identified in the quality layer.

Strengths

• Covers a defined geographic region spanning 14 townships and 11 ranges.
• Provides a direct quality mask ('bad pixels') for a specific year (2006) of Landsat data.

Limitations

• Data is limited to a single year (2006), offering no temporal trend analysis.
• The specific criteria or accuracy metrics for labeling 'bad pixels' are not detailed in the description.
• Dataset size and image resolution are unknown, limiting assessment of computational requirements.

Provenance

Source

Government of Alberta.

Collection Method

Derived from 2006 Landsat satellite imagery.

Time Range

2006.

Freshness

Last updated March 4, 2026, but the underlying imagery is from 2006.

Geography

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