Natural environments**This third party metadata element was translated using an automated translation tool (Amazon Translate).**

The Plains, Northern, Foothills Boundary feature class contains polygon features representing Department of Energy Regional Boundaries for the Province of Alberta. The Alberta Regional Boundaries divide Alberta into the Plains Region, Northern Region, and Foothills Region, for administration of Petroleum and Natural Gas Licences. A petroleum and natural gas licence is issued for an initial term of two years if it is located in the Plains Region, four years in the Northern Region, and five years in the Foothills Region.

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 ecosystem and environment. This is to be achieved through enhanced science-based monitoring for improved characterization of the environment and collection of the information necessary to understand cumulative effects. This land classification raster dataset is derived from 2009 Landsat imagery. It contains 13 classes: 0 - unclassified, 1 - exposed land/cut blocks/harvested areas, 2 - water bodies, 3 - transitional bare surfaces, 5 - mixed developed areas, 6 - developed areas, 7- shoal, 8 - shrub land, 9 - grassland, 10 - agriculture areas, 11 - coniferous forest, 12 - broad leaf forest, 13 - mixed forest, and 14- fire scar.

The Provincial Bison Protection Areas dataset is comprised of all the polygons that represent Bison Protection Areas in Alberta. In order to support the conservation, management and recovery of disease-free bison in northern Alberta, wood bison located within specified Wildlife Management Units (WMUs) are listed as Threatened under the Wildlife Act and Regulation. All hunting of wood bison within Northwest Bison Protection Area is regulated and based on issuance of a bison special licence and allocation processes for both Indigenous and non-Indigenous persons. All hunting (Indigenous and non-Indigenous) of wood bison within the Wabasca Bison Protection Area is prohibited. Legal descriptions of the boundaries of Provincial Bison Protection Areas can be found within Schedule 11 of the Wildlife Regulation. The boundaries within the Provincial Bison Protection Areas dataset have been interpreted from written legal descriptions within Schedule 11 of the Wildlife Regulation. In case of discrepancy between GIS data and the written legal description, the written legal description shall take precedence.

The data, created in ArcGIS, represents an assessment of air quality risk for the agricultural area of Alberta in 2005. Agricultural activities that may have some influence on air quality manure production (odour) and cultivation intensity (particulate matter). The airsheds of the agricultural region of Alberta are considered to be uniform in their physical susceptibility to risk from agricultural activities. Air quality risk is a useful measure for those concerned about health, safety and nuisance issues related the quality of air in agricultural areas. Awareness of where agricultural activities related to livestock production and intensive cultivation are located, may be useful for people with health or nuisance related concerns. Blowing soil can cause respiratory problems and can reduce visibility on roads and highways. Dust from farm traffic can be a concern during peak agricultural activity, such as harvesting or manure hauling. Frequent strong odours can be unpleasant nuisance for neighbours. In areas of greater air quality risk, environmental farm planning can help to address the issues and provide solutions. Practices including pen/barn maintenance, method of manure application, manure storage, composting, adjusting, feed rations and reducing or eliminating tillage can be looked at in an environmental farm plan.

The Lands Division Officer Working Zones dataset is comprised of all the polygons that represent the Forestry and Parks Lands Officer Working Zones within the Province of Alberta. The dataset is to help Government of Alberta Staff in determining which Lands Officer is responsible for the approvals within each zone.

This GIS dataset portrays the distribution of glacial landforms in Alberta, based on the compilation of existing government survey mapping and research literature, supplemented by new analysis of remote sensing data. It is the dataset that was used to create Alberta Geological Survey Map 604 (Glacial Landforms of Alberta) using an intermediate step of reducing the density of closely spaced line segments to make the features suitable for map production at 1:1 000 000 scale. This dataset contains the original line features without any cartographic generalization. The data were created in geodatabase format and output for public distribution in shapefile format.

The coal zone boundary for the Ardley Coal Zone is based on subcrops generated by Alberta Geological Survey Special Report 007 (Regional Evaluation of the Coalbed Methane Potential in the Plains and Foothills of Alberta, Stratigraphy and Rank Study). We used additional coal picks from various sources to refine the boundary.

30-year Average Dry Day Count is defined as the count of the average number of climate days which received less than 0.5 mm of precipitation during the calendar month. These values are calculated across Canada in 10x10 km cells, and are based on average precipitation amounts over a 30-year period (1961-1990, 1971-2000, 1981-2010, 1991-2020). These values are calculated across Canada in 10x10 km cells.

This digital data release includes Rock Eval and total organic carbon results of selected samples for analyses of shale gas, oil and liquids. The strata evaluated include the: - basal Banff Formation, - Colorado Group, - Duvernay Formation, - Exshaw Formation, - Montney Formation, - Muskwa Formation, - Nordegg Member, and - Rierdon Formation.