Landsat Quality Assessment For Alberta Energy Regulation Pilot Area

Alberta, Canada's Play-Based Regulation pilot area is covered by this quality evaluation dataset derived from 2009 Landsat imagery. It identifies pixels potentially misclassified due to sensor noise, cloud, haze, and shadow, flagging them with a value of '1'. The Alberta Energy Regulator created this dataset in 2014 as part of a series to assess surface change from energy exploration.

Use Cases

• Filtering out low-confidence 'bad pixels' flagged with value '1' to improve accuracy in land cover classification models.
• Training anomaly detection models to identify sensor noise, cloud, and haze artifacts in historical Landsat imagery.
• Benchmarking surface change detection algorithms by providing a quality mask for a baseline year (2009) within a regulated energy region.
• Assessing data reliability for specific towns like Edson or Whitecourt by analyzing the spatial distribution of flagged pixels.

Strengths

• Covers a defined regulatory area spanning approximately 18 townships in Alberta.
• Provides a specific quality metric ('bad pixels' flagged as value '1') for each image pixel.

Limitations

• Single-year temporal coverage (2009) limits analysis of trends or changes over time.
• Unknown spatial resolution and pixel count prevent assessment of granular detail.

Provenance

Source

Alberta Energy Regulator (AER), Government of Alberta.

Collection Method

Derived from 2009 Landsat earth observation imagery to assess classification errors.

Time Range

2009

Freshness

Metadata updated March 2026, but underlying imagery is from 2009.

Geography

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