Alberta – The Map Room

A Map of Wildfire Damage in Jasper, Alberta

Published on 27 July 202427 July 2024 by Jonathan Crowe

Fire forced the closure and evacuation of Jasper National Park this week, and the Jasper townsite itself was directly hit by flames on Wednesday. Parks Canada estimates about a third of the town’s structures have been destroyed. Municipal officials released a preliminary map today showing the damaged and destroyed buildings in the town. They stress that the information “is based on the damage that is visible from the street. We have not been inside buildings or seen the backside of properties. There may be additional damage to homes and businesses that isn’t visible from the street. Buildings marked as ‘not damaged’ on the map could also have internal damage caused by smoke and water. Consider this a preliminary description of properties affected in Jasper.” CBC News coverage.

Wildfires in Alberta

Published on 10 May 2023 by Jonathan Crowe

Here are some links to maps and satellite imagery of the wildfires devastating Alberta right now. The Alberta provincial government’s Alberta Wildfire Status Dashboard shows active wildfires and historical data; CBC News has produced four maps that distill and simplify data from that dashboard. NASA Earth Observatory has images of the wildfires from the Terra satellite’s MODIS instrument.

McPhee’s Maps of Alberta and Saskatchewan

Published on 1 September 2022 by Jonathan Crowe

Thumbnails of Alex McPhee's maps of Alberta and Saskatchewan Alex McPhee’s ridiculously detailed map of Alberta, which included things like the area burned in the 2016 Fort McMurray fire and the province’s Hutterite colonies, came out in print form—specifically, in the form of a 42″×68″ wall map—last year. Now he’s done it again: a similarly detailed 36″×66″ wall map of his home province of Saskatchewan, which he’s just sent to the printer. Each map starts at $60.

More Fort McMurray Satellite Images

Published on 16 May 2016 by Jonathan Crowe

Google Earth Blog has a roundup of the available satellite imagery of the Fort McMurray wildfire.

Previously: Satellite Imagery of Fort McMurray Wildfire Damage; DigitalGlobe Satellite Imagery of Fort McMurray; Fort McMurray Fire Roundup.

Satellite Imagery of Fort McMurray Wildfire Damage

Published on 15 May 2016 by Jonathan Crowe

Satellite imagery from the Pléiades-1A satellite showing the extent of wildfire damage caused to Fort McMurray, Alberta can be viewed through a web-based mapping application released by the government of Alberta. (Doesn’t work in Safari for Mac; works fine in Chrome.) [CBC News]

Previously: DigitalGlobe Satellite Imagery of Fort McMurray; Fort McMurray Fire Roundup.

Edmonton Building Age Map

Published on 6 April 2016 by Jonathan Crowe

Online maps showing the age of buildings in cities seem to be a thing. In addition to the map of Paris we saw in February, there’s also this map for Edmonton, Alberta. (Wired put together a list of other cities’ building age maps in 2013.) [via]

Alberta Flood Maps

Published on 21 June 20134 November 2017 by Jonathan Crowe

This is a list of maps related to the flooding in southern Alberta (Calgary, Canmore, Bragg Creek, High River, Okotoks, etc.). This list will be added to as needed. Feel free to contribute additional links in the comments.

Evacuation zone maps from the City of Calgary, in PDF format.
For a wider view, an interactive map of Calgary evacuation zones from CBC News.
A map of flooding zones across Alberta.
A flood report map from the Calgary Herald, using reader submissions.
A mobile site for crowdmapping flood reports (thanks, Matt).

Update, 10:15 PM:

The Alberta provincial government’s Flood Hazard Map Application; requires Flash (via Colby Cosh).

Update, June 22 at 8:25 AM:

Google’s Alberta Flooding Crisis Map.