The Athabasca River is a river in Alberta, Canada, which originates at the Columbia Icefield in Jasper National Park and flows more than 1,231 km (765 mi) before emptying into Lake Athabasca. Much of the land along its banks is protected in national and provincial parks, and the river is designated a Canadian Heritage River for its historical and cultural importance. The scenic Athabasca Falls is located about 30 km (19 mi) upstream from Jasper.
Oil sands, tar sands, crude bitumen, or bituminous sands, are a type of unconventional petroleum deposit. Oil sands are either loose sands or partially consolidated sandstone containing a naturally occurring mixture of sand, clay, and water, soaked with bitumen, a dense and extremely viscous form of petroleum.
Fort McMurray is an urban service area in the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo in Alberta, Canada. It is located in northeast Alberta, in the middle of the Athabasca oil sands, surrounded by boreal forest. It has played a significant role in the development of the national petroleum industry. The 2016 Fort McMurray wildfire led to the evacuation of its residents and caused widespread damage.
The Athabasca oil sands, also known as the Athabasca tar sands, are large deposits of bitumen or extremely heavy crude oil that constitute unconventional resources, located in northeastern Alberta, Canada – roughly centred on the boomtown of Fort McMurray. These oil sands, hosted primarily in the McMurray Formation, consist of a mixture of crude bitumen, silica sand, clay minerals, and water. The Athabasca deposit is the largest known reservoir of crude bitumen in the world and the largest of three major oil sands deposits in Alberta, along with the nearby Peace River and Cold Lake deposits.
The Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo is a specialized municipality in northeast Alberta, Canada. It is the second largest municipality in Alberta by area and is home to oil sand deposits known as the Athabasca oil sands.
Alberta Provincial Highway No. 63, commonly referred to as Highway 63, is a 434-kilometre (270 mi) highway in northern Alberta, Canada that connects the Athabasca oil sands and Fort McMurray to Edmonton via Highway 28. It begins as a two-lane road near the hamlet of Radway where it splits from Highway 28, running north through aspen parkland and farmland of north central Alberta. North of Boyle, it curves east to pass through the hamlet of Grassland and becomes divided west of Atmore where it again turns north, this time through heavy boreal forest and muskeg, particularly beyond Wandering River. Traffic levels significantly increase as Highway 63 bends through Fort McMurray, crossing the Athabasca River before connecting the city to the Syncrude and Suncor Energy plants further north. It ends approximately 16 km (10 mi) beyond a second crossing of the Athabasca River northeast of Fort McKay.
Chinchaga Wildland Provincial Park is a wildland provincial park in northwestern Alberta, Canada. The park is a 802.7 square kilometres (310 sq mi) environmentally protected tract of land within the 5,000 km2 (1,900 sq mi) of the greater Chinchaga wilderness area. It is a disjunct outlier of the Foothills Natural Region of Alberta. It was established on 15 December 1999. The greater Chinchaga area was identified in 1995 as an Environmentally Significant Area. It was designated by the Alberta Government as a protected area under the "Special Places" program. The park is adminsitered by the Upper Peace Land Use Framework.
Northern Alberta is a geographic region located in the Canadian province of Alberta.
The Kearl Oil Sands Project is an oil sands mine in the Athabasca Oil Sands region at the Kearl Lake area, about 70 kilometres (43 mi) north of Fort McMurray in Alberta, Canada that is operated by the 143-year old Calgary, Alberta-headquartered Imperial Oil Limited—one of the largest integrated oil companies in Canada. Kearl is owned by Imperial Oil and is controlled by Imperial's parent company, ExxonMobil—an American multinational that is one of the largest in the world.
Fort McKay or Fort MacKay is a community in northeast Alberta, Canada that is located at the confluence of the Athabasca and MacKay rivers. It is approximately 54 km (34 mi) north of Fort McMurray via Highway 63 and Fort McKay Road. The community has an elevation of 260 m (850 ft).
Waterways is a locality within the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo in northern Alberta, Canada. It is now a neighbourhood within the Fort McMurray urban service area along the west bank of the Clearwater River, south of the river's confluence with the Athabasca River.
The Chinchaga fire, also known as the Wisp fire, Chinchaga River fire and Fire 19, was a forest fire that burned in northern British Columbia and Alberta in the summer and early fall of 1950. With a final size of between 1,400,000 hectares and 1,700,000 hectares, it is the single largest recorded fire in North American history. The authorities allowed the fire to burn freely, following local forest management policy considering the lack of settlements in the region. The Chinchaga fire produced large amounts of smoke, creating the "1950 Great Smoke Pall", observed across eastern North America and Europe. As the existence of the massive fire was not well-publicized, and the smoke was mostly in the upper atmosphere and could not be smelled, there was much speculation about the atmospheric haze and its provenance. The Chinchaga firestorm's "historic smoke pall" caused "observations of blue suns and moons in the United States and Europe". It was the biggest firestorm documented in North America, and created the world's largest smoke layer in the atmosphere.
2015 Canadian wildfires were a series of wildfires across Canada and Alaska in July 2015 which spread smoke across most of North America. Over two hundred fires were ablaze across British Columbia, Saskatchewan, and Alberta.
On May 1, 2016, a wildfire began southwest of Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada. On May 3, it swept through the community, forcing the largest wildfire evacuation in Alberta's history, with upwards of 88,000 people forced from their homes. Firefighters were assisted by personnel from both the Canadian Armed Forces and Royal Canadian Mounted Police, as well as other Canadian provincial agencies, to fight the wildfire. Aid for evacuees was provided by various governments and via donations through the Canadian Red Cross and other local and national charitable organizations.
The 2019 Alberta wildfires have been described by NASA as part of an extreme fire season in the province. In 2019 there were a total of 803,393.32 hectares, which is over 3.5 times more land area burned than in the five-year average burned. The five year average is 747 fires destroying 146,360.08 hectares. There were 644 wildfires recorded in Alberta. By May 31, 10,000 people had been evacuated, 16 homes, and the Steen River CN railway bridge, had been destroyed.
The Canadian province of Alberta faces a number of environmental issues related to natural resource extraction—including oil and gas industry with its oil sands—endangered species, melting glaciers in banff, floods and droughts, wildfires, and global climate change. While the oil and gas industries generates substantial economic wealth, the Athabasca oil sands, which are situated almost entirely in Alberta, are the "fourth most carbon intensive on the planet behind Algeria, Venezuela and Cameroon" according to an August 8, 2018 article in the American Association for the Advancement of Science's journal Science. This article details some of the environmental issues including past ecological disasters in Alberta and describes some of the efforts at the municipal, provincial and federal level to mitigate the risks and impacts.
The 2023 Alberta wildfires are a series of ongoing wildfires in the province of Alberta, Canada as part of the 2023 Canadian wildfires, as of 20 May 2023 have burned over 842,000 hectares. This May 20 situation includes 91 active wildfires throughout the province, 25 of them out of control. Multiple communities have been placed under evacuation orders, resulting in over 29,000 people being evacuated. On May 6, the province of Alberta declared a provincial state of emergency.
