Land Cover Quality Evaluation for Alberta Energy Regulation Pilot

Alberta's Play-Based Regulation pilot area, covering towns from Edson to Valleyview, is assessed using this 2006 Landsat imagery dataset. It was created by the Alberta Energy Regulator to identify misclassified pixels caused by sensor noise, clouds, haze, and shadows. The dataset marks these problematic areas as 'bad pixels' with a value of '1'.

Use Cases

• Filtering out 'bad pixels' (value 1) from 2006 land cover classifications to improve map accuracy by removing areas affected by cloud, haze, or sensor noise.
• Benchmarking automated cloud and shadow detection algorithms against the manually identified quality issues in this Landsat-derived dataset.
• Assessing the spatial distribution of classification errors within the PBR pilot area to prioritize ground-truthing efforts in regions with high 'bad pixel' density.
• Training a binary classifier to predict pixel quality (good vs. bad) using spectral bands from Landsat imagery as input features.

Strengths

• Dataset focuses on a defined regulatory pilot area spanning from Township 52 to 70 in Alberta.
• Quality labels target specific, documented sources of error: sensor noise, cloud, haze, and cloud shadow.
• Provides a clear, binary classification scheme where problematic areas are assigned a value of '1'.

Limitations

• The dataset is based on a single year (2006) of imagery, limiting analysis of temporal change.
• The exact number of rows/pixels and spatial resolution are unknown, making it difficult to gauge dataset scale.
• Quality assessment is specific to 2006 conditions and Landsat sensor characteristics, which may not generalize to newer imagery.

Provenance

Source

Alberta Energy Regulator (AER), Government of Alberta.

Collection Method

Derived from 2006 Landsat satellite imagery through a manual or semi-automated quality evaluation process.

Time Range

2006

Freshness

Metadata was updated in March 2026, but the underlying image data is from 2006.

Geography

Play-Based Regulation pilot area in Alberta, Canada, covering towns including Edson, Fox Creek, Mayerthorpe, Whitecourt, Swan Hills, and Valleyview.