The data in this information product illustrates the boundaries of Alberta's 87 Provincial Electoral Divisions. Electoral Boundaries are defined by the Alberta Election Act, Chapter E-1, 2018. Provincial Electoral Divisions (PEDs) are territorial units represented by an elected Member to serve in the Alberta Provincial Legislative Assembly. The Provincial Electoral Divisions used in this information product were enacted in December 2017 and came into effect for the 2019 provincial general election.

Coal zone boundary for the Mannville 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.

Point features showing the location of intakes and/or wellheads for drinking water systems. A drinking water system is any domestic system servicing anything other than a single-family dwelling, as defined in the Drinking Water Protection Act. These locations are updated as more information is received and is therefore continually being updated and may or may not match the corresponding Point of Diversion locations available through the Water Rights dataset and application. This is one of three Drinking Water Sources datasets (along with the DWS - Source Areas polygons dataset, and DWS - Protection Zones polygons dataset). Note: the polygons all have unique polygon IDs used to relate them to these points.

Fisheries Information Summary System (FISS) layer of Historic (pre 2001) Fish Distribution Points of BC Streams. Points represent site locations where a fish species is rearing, spawning or observed or where a point is located at the mouth of a stream it indicates the presence of a fish species somewhere in the stream as a whole. Georeferenced to the stream centreline network layer of the 1:50,000 scale BC Watershed Atlas.

Ecosection boundaries with percent protected, number of overlapping protected areas and other attributes added as a result of geoprocessing in the Protected Area System Overview (PASO) application. Protected area and park representation by ecosection provides a landscape context for natural resource planning processes such as; management plans, land use zoning, environmental risk assessment, landscape analysis, habitat supply, and management of high priority species. Ecosections are distinguished from each other by enduring characteristics such as minor physiographic and macroclimatic or oceanographic variations. For more information on ecosections and the Ecoregion Classification System see: http://www.env.gov.bc.ca/ecology/ecoregions/index.html. For important warnings about using this data for spatial analysis see the Data Quality section of the metadata

Data represents surface water occurrence frequency (percentage), which describes the frequency for each grid appeared as water in the 30 years time period of 1991 to 2020. The data covers Canada’s entire landmass including all transboundary watersheds, and is at 30-meter spatial resolution. The surface water occurrence frequency is derived using the surface water model of Wang et al. (2023) from all-available monthly water data observed by the Landsat satellites (Pekel et al., 2016). Here, permanent waters are represented by 100%, and permanent land surfaces by 0%, of water occurrence for a 30-meter by 30-meter grid. References: Pekel, J.-F., A. Cottam, N. Gorelick, A.S. Belward, 2016, High-resolution mapping of global surface water and its long-term changes. Nature, 540, 418-422. Wang, S., J. Li, and H. A. J. Russell, 2023, Methods for Estimating Surface Water Storage Changes and Their Evaluations. Journal of Hydrometeorology, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1175/JHM-D-22-0098.1.

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 2011 and 2012 and Land Use and Land Cover (LULC) classification data derived from 2012 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.

The Geographic Feature Code Catalogue contains codes and definitions for geographic features captured and mapped by various BC Government Ministries, which are responsible for their definitions. These codes (fcodes) are embedded into geographic data to mark them, as an aid to integrating data from many sources. (WHSE_CORP.CORP_FEATURES)

Province-wide SDE layer showing linear works associated with a Water Licence

2021 Municipal Election — Sections (polling day offices)**This third party metadata element was translated using an automated translation tool (Amazon Translate).**