Trust

How the Numbers Are Made: Methodology

Where every figure on landintelligence.online comes from: the report pipeline's data sources, how county figures are estimated or sampled, how contractors are matched to counties, and how grants are curated.

1. The parcel report

The free report at report.landintelligence.online runs a fixed pipeline on the boundary you draw. Each section names its source inside the report and the sources are listed again in a provenance block. The main ones:

• Wells: Alberta Water Well Information Database records within 5 km; predicted depth uses completion intervals, screens and pump tests, not raw total depth.
• Terrain: Natural Resources Canada HRDEM 1 m LiDAR where available, SRTM 30 m elsewhere; canopy height from LiDAR DSM minus DTM.
• Wetlands and water: Alberta Merged Wetland Inventory, Wet Areas Mapping predicted streams, Alberta watersheds, base water features.
• Soil: Agricultural Land Resource Atlas of Alberta.
• Climate: NRCan Plant Hardiness Zones of Canada (4th edition, 1991–2020 normals); Open-Meteo 30-year normals and ERA5 for precipitation and temperature; a regional frost table keyed by zone.
• Solar: NRCan photovoltaic potential and municipal insolation tables; the report states its performance-ratio assumptions.
• Land value: Alberta Agriculture transfer averages by CLI class and municipality, trend-adjusted with FCC farmland value changes; never a parcel appraisal.
• Wildlife: GBIF and iNaturalist observations nearby; species-at-risk ranges flagged without pinpointing locations.

When a service times out, the report says "unknown" for that field rather than guessing. You can read a complete unedited run on Crown land at the live example.

2. County and town figures

Each of the 68 county guides shows a typical well depth, static water level, aquifer, hardiness zone, frost-free days, solar irradiance and wetland density. Two kinds of figure appear, and every page tells you which it is using:

• Sampled (68 counties so far): we run the production report on an ~800 m square at a representative point in the county and copy its well, hardiness and solar figures. The page then names the legal description sampled and the number of well records used. This is real data for one quarter; it is still not your parcel.
• Regional estimate: for counties not yet sampled, figures are drawn from published hardiness maps, climate normals, the pattern of Alberta well records in that geological belt, and NASA POWER-style irradiance for the region. They are marked "regional estimate" in the text. We are replacing them with sampled values and will note the date on each page.

Aquifer names and the written context for each county are editorial, based on Alberta Geological Survey mapping and local knowledge, and are reviewed by hand. Town pages inherit their county's figures and add town-specific context. Corrections are welcome at matthewh@landintelligence.online.

3. Contractors and suppliers

The procurement directory lists Alberta providers compiled from public sources: trade associations, regulator directories, and provider websites. Each listing carries a verification tag (identified, partially verified, capability verified) and the date it was last checked. We take no commission from any provider. One listing, Expanding Edge, is operated by the same owner as this site; it is labelled wherever it appears and is not ranked ahead of other providers. County pages for wells, septic, solar, fencing and excavation list a provider only when it states Alberta-wide coverage, names a municipality in or near the county, or is based within about 120 km; the reason is printed on the card. Full directory methodology.

4. Grants

Program pages summarise the official text and link to it. Rows without an official source are labelled planning pathways, not programs. Dates on the calendar are extracted from program text we last reviewed and are shown with the sentence they came from. We do not administer any program and nothing here is grant-writing, legal or tax advice. Program guide.

5. What we will not do

• Present a county average as a parcel fact.
• Invent a flood status, a well depth or a grant where the data or program does not exist.
• Publish a private parcel as an example. Examples use Crown or public land.
• Rank a contractor for money, or rank the owner's own company ahead of anyone.

Page reviewed 2026-10-08.