The Province of Alberta includes some of the most diverse terrain in North America. Mountains, foothills and plains temper regional climates, the intensity of solar radiation decreases markedly from the 49th to the 60th parallel, and regional landscapes transform solar and climatic influences to produce an intricate ecological complex.

In Alberta, Natural Regions and Natural Subregions have supplied the provincial ecological context within which resource management activities have been planned and implemented since the 1970s. Examples of these activities include regional to local integrated resource plans, protected areas program plans based on Natural Subregion themes, numerous forest and range inventory and analysis systems nested within Natural Subregions, and provincial state of the environment reports at the Natural Region level