Oil Sands Regions:
TOTAL AREA:
17,834 km2
TOTAL Human Footprint:
7,549 km2
Region Overview
The Cold Lake Oil Sands Area (OSA), the smallest of Alberta’s three oil sands areas, covers 17,834 km2 (2.7% of the province) in northeast Alberta. The region overlays the Cold Lake Oil Sands bitumen deposit. Like the Peace River OSA, these deposits are located too deep underground to extract using surface mining and therefore can only be accessed using in situ technology. While energy development is common, agriculture is the predominant land use. Tourism and recreation are also important, as this area has the province’s highest density of high-quality recreational lakes. The Cold Lake Air Weapons Range occupies the northern half of the landbase. Human footprint status and trends are summarized for the Cold Lake OSA.
Status
As of 2021, human footprint occupied 42.5% of the Cold Lake OSA. Agriculture was the dominant human footprint, covering 34.9% of the region. The next largest footprints—energy (2.3%), transportation (2.4%), and urban/industrial (2.4%)—each covered much smaller areas.
| Human Footprint Type | Area (km2) | Area (%) |
|---|
Figure: Status of Human Footprint. Summary of percentage cover of total human footprint broken down by human footprint category in the Cold Lake Oil Sands Area, circa 2021.
Trend
- Between 2000 and 2021, the total area of human footprint in the Cold Lake OSA increased from 39.1% to 42.5%.
- All footprint types had small increases during this time, with energy (0.9%), agriculture (0.8%), and urban/industrial (1.1%) showing the largest increases.
- Forestry had a very small increase of 0.1 percentage points between 2000 and 2021, but when recovery of harvested stands was taken into account, there was a very small decrease, of 0.1 percentage points.
| Human Footprint Type | 2000 (km2) | 2021 (km2) | Change (km2) |
|---|
| Human Footprint Type | 2000 (%) | 2021 (%) | Change (%) |
|---|
Figure: Trend in Human Footprint. Trend in the percentage area of total human footprint, and by human footprint category in the Cold Lake Oil Sands Area between 2000 and 2021. Click on the entries in the legend to turn human footprint categories on and off.
Status of Linear Human Footprint
- In the Cold Lake OSA, density of linear features was 3.0 km/km2.
- Conventional seismic lines were the most common line type, representing 50% of the total length of all lines with a density of 1.5 km/km2, followed by roads (0.9 km/km2) and pipelines (0.6 km/km2).
- Transmission lines and railways had very low densities in the Cold Lake OSA.
| Type | Density (km/km2) |
|---|
Figure: Status of Linear Human Footprint. Density (km/km2) of linear features in the Cold Lake Oil Sands Area, circa 2021, overall and broken down by linear feature type. Hover over bar or legend to view density of specific linear feature type. Please note low impact seismic lines are not included in the summary of linear footprint density.