Oil Sands Regions:

TOTAL AREA:
17,834 km2

TOTAL Human Footprint:
7,585 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 2023, human footprint occupied in the Cold Lake Oil Sands Area.

Agriculture was the dominant human footprint, covering 35.0% of the region. The next largest footprints—energy (1.7%), urban/industrial (1.8%), and transportation (2.8%)—each covered much smaller areas. 

Human Footprint Type Area (km2) Area (%)
Due to rounding errors and/or small amounts of human footprint that cannot currently be assigned to a reporting category, the sum of the individual human footprint reporting categories may not equal the total human footprint value.

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 2023.

Legend
Figure: Map of Human Footprint. Status of human footprint by sector in the Cold Lake Oil Sands Area (circa 2023). Click on sectors in the Legend to turn different footprint types on and off. Zoom into map for a detailed view of the distribution of human footprint. This map can be explored in more detail in the ABMI Mapping Portal.

Trend

  • Between 2000 and 2023, the total area of human footprint in the Cold Lake Oil Sands Area
  • All footprint types had small increases during this time, with energy (0.6%), agriculture (1.0%), and urban/industrial (0.6%) showing the largest increases. 
  • Forestry had a very small increase of 0.2 percentage points between 2000 and 2023, but when recovery of harvested stands was taken into account, there was a very small decrease, of 0.04 percentage points.
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 Cold Lake 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 Cold Lake Oil Sands Area.
  • Roads were the most common line type, representing 38% of the total length of all lines with a density of 1.0 km/km2, followed by other linear features (0.7 km/km2) and legacy seismic lines (0.7 km/km2). 
  • Transmission lines and railways had very low densities in the Cold Lake OSA.

Figure: Status of Linear Human Footprint. Density (km/km2) of linear features in the Cold Lake 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.

Legend
Figure: Map of Linear Human Footprint. Status of linear features, by line type, in the Cold Lake Oil Sands Area, circa 2023. Click on line types in the Legend to turn on and off. Zoom into map for a detailed view of the distribution of linear features. This map can be explored in more detail in the ABMI Mapping Portal.