Quality Evaluation Dataset for 2008 Landsat Imagery in Alberta

2008 Landsat satellite imagery covering a pilot project area in Alberta, Canada. The Alberta Energy Regulator produced this quality evaluation dataset to identify misclassified pixels due to sensor noise, clouds, haze, and shadows. It supports the assessment of surface change from energy exploration within the Play-Based Regulation framework.

Use Cases

• Masking out 'bad pixels' (value '1') from 2008 Landsat imagery to improve classification accuracy for land cover change analysis.
• Benchmarking geospatial data quality algorithms by testing against identified areas of sensor noise, cloud, and haze.
• Supporting regulatory compliance analysis by providing a quality-checked baseline image for the Play-Based Regulation pilot area spanning multiple townships.
• Training machine learning models to automatically detect cloud cover and sensor artifacts in satellite imagery of Northern Alberta.

Strengths

• Covers a defined regulatory area spanning from Township 52 to Township 70 in Alberta.
• Focuses on 2008 data, providing a specific historical baseline for change detection studies.
• Explicitly identifies problematic pixels (value '1') due to known atmospheric and sensor issues.

Limitations

• Contains only a single year (2008) of imagery, limiting temporal trend analysis.
• Spatial coverage is restricted to a specific pilot area in Alberta, not representative of broader regions.
• The raw description lacks specifics on image resolution, band count, or total pixel count.

Provenance

Source

Government of Alberta / Alberta Energy Regulator.

Collection Method

Derived from 2008 Landsat satellite imagery through quality evaluation processing.

Time Range

2008

Freshness

Dataset metadata was last updated in March 2026, though the underlying imagery is from 2008.

Geography

Alberta, Canada, covering townships from Twp. 52, Rge. 7, W 5th Mer. to Twp. 70, Rge. 5, W 6th Mer., including towns like Edson, Fox Creek, and Whitecourt.