Description
The Land Suitability Rating System (LSRS) rating map illustrates the relative suitability of lands in Alberta for growing spring-seeded small grains and shows how the dominant LSRS codes are distributed across Alberta. The LSRS rating process improves on the more subjective and dated Canada Land Inventory rating process. The map combines the AGRASID 4.1 computed LSRS values of the agricultural area of the province with the SLC 3.2 computed LSRS values of the forested area of the province. See Usage Considerations for more detail.
Updated
March 19, 2024
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Land suitability rating of Alberta 1995
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1 map
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Once
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Agriculture and Irrigation
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Date Created
2024-03-19
Date Added
2024-03-19T22:30:12.780273
Date Modified
2024-03-19
Date Issued
2024-03-19
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Usage Considerations
The Land Suitability Rating System (LSRS) rating map illustrates the relative suitability of lands in Alberta for growing spring seeded small grains. The LSRS rating process, published in the federal Technical Bulletin 1995-6E (Land Suitability Rating System for Agricultural Crops, 1. Spring-Seeded Small Grains), improves on the more subjective, and dated Canada Land Inventory (CLI) rating process that preceded the introduction of the LSRS rating process.
As an example, a Class 2 LSRS rating assigned to land in Alberta would have an equivalent ability to grow spring seeded, small grain, cereals as would land in Manitoba with an LSRS rating of Class 2. If this example was repeated on the same lands using the CLI classification instead, the CLI land classes would likely be different, even though technically the two rating systems share a common ordinal set of classes between 1 and 7 with 0 representing areas with no classification. The LSRS rating process was designed to be more objective and national in scope.
In 2012 Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada modeled and verified the 1995 LSRS ratings, using National Agro-climatic Information Service (NAIS) climate normals from 1961 to 1990 contained in 10 km, gridded, climate files. The LSRS values were computed for soil polygons at two mapping resolutions for Alberta:
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Finer scale (1: 100,000) polygons contained in Agriculture Regions of Alberta Soil Inventory Database (AGRASID) version 4.1. AGRASID 4.1 cover most of what are considered the traditional agricultural areas of Alberta.
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Courser scale (1: 1,000,000) polygons contained in the National Ecological Stratification, Soil Landscape of Canada (SLC) version 3.2 polygons. The SLC 3.2 polygons cover both the agricultural and forested areas of Alberta.
The Land Suitability Rating of Alberta 1995 map combines the AGRASID 4.1 computed LSRS values of the agricultural area the province with the SLC 3.2 computed LSRS values of the forested area of the province.