Natural Regions:
TOTAL AREA:
66,437 km2
TOTAL Human Footprint:
23,366 km2
Region Overview
The Foothills Natural Region, located on the eastern flank of the Rocky Mountains, covers approximately 66,000 km2 or 10% of the province. Characterized by variable terrain and a moist, cool climate, the lower slopes consist of rolling hills and plateaus with of mixture of grassland, deciduous, and mixedwood forests. At higher elevations, slopes become steeper and conifer forests predominate. Streams with headwaters originating in the Rocky Mountains frequently bisect the landscape. As a transitional ecosystem between the Rocky Mountain Natural Region to the west and the Grassland and Boreal Natural Regions to the east and north, biodiversity in the foothills is generally a mix of these surrounding regions. Human footprint is presented for the Foothills Natural Region.
Status
Forestry was the dominant human footprint, covering 25.7% of the region, followed by agriculture footprint (3.3%), energy footprint (3.2%), and transportation footprint (2.1%). The remaining footprint types each covered < 1.0% of the region.
| 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 Foothills Natural Region, circa 2023.
Trend
- Between 2000 and 2023, the total area of human footprint in the Foothills Natural Region
- Almost all of this increase can be attributed to the expansion of forestry footprint, which increased by 14.3 percentage points, more than doubling in size during this time from 11.4% to 25.7%. However, this increase in forestry footprint is lower when forest recovery is considered: forestry footprint increased by 9.6 percentage points, from 9.6% to 19.2%, when recovery of regenerating forest is included.
- The remaining human footprint categories all had small increases of < 1.0 percentage point between 2000 and 2023, with energy footprint showing the next largest increase from 2.3% to 3.2%.
| Human Footprint Type | 2000 (km2) | 2023 (km2) | Change (km2) |
|---|
| Human Footprint Type | 2000 (%) | 2023 (%) | Change (%) |
|---|
Figure: Trend in Human Footprint. Trend in the percentage area of total human footprint, and by human footprint category in the Foothills Natural Region between 1950 and 2023. Click on the entries in the legend to turn human footprint categories on and off.
Status of Linear Human Footprint
- Density of linear features was in the Foothills Natural Region.
- Seismic lines, with a density of 2.0 km/km2, were the predominant linear feature, representing 51% of linear footprint in the region.
- Density of roads (0.8 km/km2) and other linear features (0.7 km/km2) combined represented 37% of all linear footprint in the Foothills Natural Region.
- Transmission lines and railways had very low densities.
Figure: Status of Linear Human Footprint. Density (km/km2) of linear features in the Foothills Natural Region, circa 2023, overall and broken down by linear feature type. Hover over bar or legend to view density of specific linear feature type. Please note that linear density reporting excludes seismic line types that are not consistently represented provincially, including: Seismic Line of Sight, Low Impact Seismic, Seismic Conventional (Modern), Seismic Avoidance, and unconfirmed seismic lines.