Wall-to-Wall Human Footprint Inventory
A comprehensive digital representation of anthropogenic disturbances (e.g., agriculture, forestry, energy) on the Alberta land-base, digitized manually, as seen from SPOT6 satellite imagery. This includes linear features.
Understanding Relationships
These data were created to provide open and free datasets depicting prevalent and accurate delineation of surficial human disturbances in Alberta to stakeholders; foreseeably utilized in research, land use management and regional planning, trend analysis, and general interest.
Effective management of human footprint requires a reliable and credible system for monitoring and reporting. The ABMI has been reporting on human footprint since 2007, and beginning in 2015, has been working in collaboration with the Government of Alberta as part of the Alberta Human Footprint Monitoring Program (AHFMP) to improve the accuracy of human footprint. For the ABMI 2014 wall-to-wall human footprint inventory, the base layers produced through the AHFMP were used by the ABMI to update four Human Footprint (HF) categories: roads, rails, well sites, and seismic lines. Continued annual updates of this product along with the sample-based human footprint trend data include many categories beyond these original four (e.g. cultivation, industrial and mine trips, pipelines, residential areas, etc.) Both of these HF products are used to report on the amount, type, and distribution of different human footprint categories in the province through time. See the ABMI's latest State of Human Footprint in Alberta report here (add link to: https://abmi.ca/home/reports/2022/human-footprint).
A Brief Description of Methods
At the provincial scale, the ABMI consolidates up to 21 human footprint categories (based on more than 90 anthropogenic disturbance types) into a single integrated dataset by applying a specific order of precedence to create the ABMI Human Footprint Inventory (see the HFI 2021 Metadata document). Datasets are currently publicly available for these years: 2010, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021.
The most up to date and preeminent Human Footprint Inventory 2021 (HFI 2021) dataset was developed in part by a collaborative effort of data accumulation between the Government of Alberta and the ABMI, together forming the Alberta Human Footprint Monitoring Program (AHFMP) to better enhance and update human footprint data in Alberta. Going forward, all human footprint data and information produced by the AHFMP will be made available online in a single authoritative data sharing format. These efforts are incorporated into the leading development of techniques in interpretation and delineation that supersede previous technical approaches made by the ABMI.
The 2010 Version 1 dataset was retroactively re-constructed based on the HFI 2014 dataset’s improved data collection and delineation techniques. However, due to data licensing issues, this dataset no longer offers information on pipelines. Nevertheless, the HFI 2010 Version 2 has been retroactively re-constructed using more recent data , and does include pipeline information. The 2010 Human Footprint Inventory will be an integral part of a decadal collection of datasets (e.g., 2010, 2020, 2030, and etc.) for future human footprint trend analysis and will be updated collectively henceforth.
Linear Features
The linear features datasets represent visually interpreted human made disturbances on the land surface throughout the province of Alberta, beginning in the year 2014. Representative Polylines were updated from visual interpretation of SPOT6 satellite imagery and organized into five categories: Roads, Railways, Transmission Lines, Pipelines and Seismic Lines within the HFI2014 and subsequent datasets. These datasets are intended to aid human footprint and land use inquiries in Alberta.
Note: Due to a licensing issue, pipeline datasets are not publicly available in Human Footprint 2010v1, 2014, 2015 and 2016. Datasets for 2017 onward have a pipeline sublayer (2010v2, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021).
Enhanced for the Oil Sands Monitoring Region (2021)
Year 2021
Year 2020
Enhanced for the Oil Sands Monitoring Region (2020)
This dataset provides an enhanced version of the Human Footprint Inventory for an area over the Oil Sands Region of Alberta, with additional attributes such as sector (agriculture, forestry, conventional oil and gas, etc.), nighttime light, and year of origin, among others.
Year 2019
Enhanced for the Oil Sands Monitoring Region (2019)
This dataset provides an enhanced version of the Human Footprint Inventory for an area over the Oil Sands Region of Alberta, with additional attributes such as sector (agriculture, forestry, conventional oil and gas, etc.), nighttime light, and year of origin, among others.
Year 2018
This dataset provides an enhanced version of the Human Footprint Inventory for an area over the Oil Sands Monitoring Region of Alberta, with additional attributes such as sector (agriculture, forestry, conventional oil and gas, etc.), nighttime light, and year of origin, among others.
Enhanced for the Oil Sands Monitoring Region (2018)
This dataset provides an enhanced version of the Human Footprint Inventory for an area over the Oil Sands Region of Alberta, with additional attributes such as sector (agriculture, forestry, conventional oil and gas, etc.), nighttime light, and year of origin, among others.
Year 2017
Please use follow ftp instruction to download
Year 2016
Year 2015
Linear features are included as a feature dataset within the HFI 2015 and subsequent HFI geodatabases (i.e., they are not a separate geodatabase).
Year 2014 (including Linear Features)
Year 2010
Year 2010 Version 2
Version 2 of the HFI 2010 was created and updated so as to include pipeline data for circa 2010 (which is not available within the HFI 2010 Version 1 dataset).
Year 1980s for the Oil Sands Monitoring Region
This version includes data within the OSA boundary.
BATCH DOWNLOAD DATA FILES VIA FTP:
FTP Server: ftp.public.abmi.ca
Username: anonymous (no password required)
Path: /GISData/HumanFootprint/
Data Download
- Overview
- Species & Habitat Raw Data
- Human Footprint Products
- Wall-to-Wall Human Footprint Inventory
- 3 x 7-km Sample-based Human Footprint Data
- Harvest Area Spectral Regeneration
- Lidar Products
- ABMI GitHub
- Advanced Landcover Prediction & Habitat Assessment (ALPHA) Products
- Other Geospatial Land Surface Data
- GIS Data: Biodiversity
- Species-level Data Sets
- Remote Camera Mammal Data
- Rare Species Data
- Data Archive