Oil Sands Regions:
TOTAL AREA:
29,120 km2
TOTAL Human Footprint:
6,730 km2
Region Overview
The Peace River Oil Sands Area (OSA) encompasses an area of 29,120 km2 (4% of the province) in north-central Alberta. The region overlays the Peace River Oil Sands bitumen deposit. These deposits are located too deep underground to extract using surface mining and therefore can only be accessed using in situ technology. Forestry is another important industry as this region almost entirely overlaps with the Boreal Forest Natural Region. Areas in the southwest of the Peace River OSA consist of parkland vegetation, characterized by a mixture of Aspen and White Spruce groves interspersed with prairie grasslands; much of the parkland has been converted to agricultural use. Human footprint status and trends are summarized for the Peace River OSA.
Status
Agriculture was the dominant human footprint, covering 13.9%, followed by forestry (4.9%), energy (1.9%), transportation (1.3%), and urban/industrial (0.5%) footprints. Human-created water bodies occupied <1.0% of the Peace River OSA.
| 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 Peace River Oil Sands Area, circa 2023.
Trend
- Between 2000 and 2023, the total area of human footprint in the Peace River Oil Sands Area
- This increase in human footprint was driven by the expansion of forestry footprint, which increased by 2.9 percentage points, from 2.0% to 4.9%. However, this increase in forestry footprint is lower when forest recovery is considered: forestry footprint increased by 1.8 percentage points (1.6% to 3.4%) when recovery of regenerating forest is included.
- The remaining human footprint categories each had increases of <1.0 percentage point between 2000 and 2023.
| 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 Peace River Oil Sands Area 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 Peace River Oil Sands Area.
- Legacy seismic lines were the dominant line type, with a density of 2.3 km/km2.
- Density of roads and other linear features represent 15% and 13% of linear footprint in the Peace River OSA, with densities of 0.5 km/km2 and 0.4 km/km2, respectively.
- Transmission lines and railways had very low densities in the Peace River OSA.
Figure: Status of Linear Human Footprint. Density (km/km2) of linear features in the Peace River Oil Sands Area, 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.