The Special Area dataset is comprised of all the polygons that represent Special Areas in Alberta. Special Area is a rural municipality type defined under the authority of the Municipal Government Act. Special Areas were established under the Special Areas Act in 1938 due to extreme hardship of the drought years of the 1930s. The Special Areas Act of 1938 has more or less remained intact although there were some amendments in 1966 and 1985. Special Area refers to a rural area in southeast Alberta.

The Base Features Access Railway spatial layer is the authoritative source of railway data for the province of Alberta. It is a part of the Access data collection which also includes roads, powerlines, cutlines and trails, and industrial facilities.

The Forest Protection Area dataset is comprised of all the polygons that represent the administrative areas established by Forest Protection, Forestry Division of Alberta Agriculture and Forestry concerned with the prevention and control of damage to forests from fire, insects, disease and other harmful agents.

The data represents an assessment of biodiversity risk for the agricultural area of Alberta in 2002. Biodiversity risk refers to the loss of biological diversity, or the variety of plant and animal life in agricultural landscapes. This map, created in ArcGIS, tries to show where biodiversity could be threatened, such as in areas with significant habitat that coincide with areas of greater agricultural economic activity. Biodiversity is believed to affect the overall health of the environment.

The Cold Lake oil sands area - Township 56 to 69, Range 1 to 11, west of the 4th Meridian, falls within the Lower Athabasca Regional Plan (LARP). As part of Alberta's Land-use Framework, LARP was developed in 2012 to set the stage for robust growth, vibrant communities and a healthy environment within the region. One of its implementation objectives is to balance the economic development of oil sands and impacts on the ecosystem and environment. This is to be achieved through enhanced science-based monitoring for improved characterization of the environment and to collect the information necessary to understand cumulative effects. Landsat multispectral imagery for 2009 and 2010 and Land Use and Land Cover (LULC) classification data derived from 2010 were used to produce this dataset. The LULC changes include vegetation loss from anthropogenic disturbances, such as infrastructure related to oil and gas exploration, forestry and agriculture, and vegetation recovery from these disturbances. This digital data release contains the vegetation recovery data from 2009 to 2010, classified into 6 classes: 1 - shrub land, 2 - grassland, 3 - agricultural areas, 4 - coniferous forest, 5 - broadleaf forest and 6 - mixed forest.

In 2014, the Alberta Energy Regulator (AER) initiated a Play-Based Regulation (PBR) pilot project as a step towards implementation of the Unconventional Regulatory Framework. One of the goals of the PBR pilot is to encourage companies in the unconventional play area to work together on plans for surface development to minimize the numbers of facilities and surface impacts. This dataset is one of a series created using earth observation imagery to assess surface change caused by energy exploration. The PBR area extends from Twp. 52, Rge. 7, W 5th Mer. to Twp. 70, Rge. 5, W 6th Mer., covering the towns of Edson, Fox Creek, Mayerthorpe, Whitecourt, Swan Hills, and Valleyview. Landsat multispectral imagery for 2005 and 2006 and Land Use and Land Cover (LULC) classification data derived from 2006 were used to produce this dataset. The LULC changes include vegetation loss from anthropogenic disturbances, such as infrastructure related to oil and gas exploration, forestry and agriculture, and vegetation recovery from these disturbances. This digital data release contains the vegetation recovery data, classified into 6 classes: 1 - shrub land, 2 - grassland, 3 - agricultural areas, 4 - coniferous forest, 5 - broadleaf forest and 6 - mixed forest.

This layer contains point representation of bridge, tunnel and ferry events along the Alberta road network.

Alberta Geological Survey created a coal and coalbed methane (CBM) database to capture and manage CBM data. The database compiles different sources and contains information on 7923 wells (15,200 formation picks, 37,357 coal picks, 495 coal analyses and 363 vitrinite reflectance measurements). From this parent dataset, individual coal zone was evaluated. This record describes the Mannville coal zone net coal thickness.

Flood zones standard v1**This third party metadata element was translated using an automated translation tool (Amazon Translate).**

An administrative unit of forest land designated by the Minister, as authorized under Section 14(1) of the Forests Act.