From ancient cave drawings depicting hunting grounds to hand-sketched layouts of backyard gardens, humans conceptualize space through map making. Maps serve both to capture what exists on the landscape and to plan future uses by intentionally defining where specific activities can happen. Modern satellite technology creates geospatial datasets that can contribute to current and proposed land use management planning, all underpinned by the pursuit of the public good.

Background
The Province of Alberta engages in land use planning through the 2008 Land Use Framework (LUF) under the Alberta Land Stewardship Act (ALSA). ALSA intends to, "plan for the future needs of Albertans and manage growth" (Alberta Environment and Protected Areas, 2022). Currently, the South Saskatchewan Regional Plan is in effect, with subregional plans completed for the Livingstone-Porcupine Subregion. Along with East Kananaskis, the Ghost Subregion is next in line for targeted subregional plans. The White Zone (settled areas) and Green Zone (forested areas) of Alberta dictate different planning approaches as private and public lands respectively. As the majority of the land base within the Ghost Region is public land, this presentation will focus on how geospatial data can help inform the government-led planning process, balancing competing values and pressures in this finite space.

Focus Group
To prepare for an anticipated landscape management planning process in the Ghost Region, a focus group comprised of disposition holders, recreational user groups, watershed stewardship groups, and local community members has been working for years to compile and share existing, publicly available and authoritative ecological data along with human footprint status and trends. Data captured from local knowledge constitutes additional layers. Important contributions come from work done by the Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Institute (ABMI) including the (1) Wall-to-Wall Human Footprint Inventory and the (2) Wetland Inventory. In addition, ABMI provided a report on the status and trends of human footprint within the Rocky Mountains Forest Reserve for 6 human footprint types: Agriculture, Energy, Forestry, Transportation, Urban/Industrial and Human-Created Waterbodies. These satellite derived datasets help to inform the planning process, provoking thoughtful questions about how to best manage these critical headwater areas.