As part of an on-going initiative to develop a clearer understanding of the impacts of oil sands development on the environment and support annual reporting processes, Alberta Environment initiated a project to create a Geospatial Database for Existing Oil Sands Industrial Features. This project included a range of landcover/land use assessments of surface disturbance and reclamation features in the 2000s, 1990s and 1980s.
The primary objective of this project was to create a geospatial database of oil sands disturbance and reclamation features derived from recent (2007) and historical (1998 and 1985) data. The source data included satellite imagery, orthophotos, conservation and reclamation reports (CnR) submitted by oil sands operators, and a series of other ancillary GIS data supplied by Alberta Environment. The project employed the following steps:
• First, 2007 oil sands CnR reports were examined and landform features were digitized from geo-referenced maps. The resulting data were used to refine an initial landcover classification of 2007 multi-spectral SPOT-5 imagery to create a final landcover/land use classification dataset.
• Second, 1998 oil sands CnR were examined and landform features were extracted from geo-referenced maps for that year. The resulting dataset was again used to refine an initial landcover classification of Landsat-5 imagery from 1998 to create a final landcover/land use classification dataset.
• Finally, 1985 oil sands historical documents were examined and landform features were extracted from orthophotos from the 1980s. As above, the resulting dataset was used to refine an initial landcover classification of Landsat-5 imagery from the 1980s to create a final landcover/land use classification dataset.
The project deliverables included designing, building, and populating an ESRI ArcGIS file geodatabase with 2007, 1998 and 1985 satellite image mosaics, orthophotos, oil sands project boundaries, and derived landcover/land use feature datasets. Methodology documents were also completed for this project.