Enabling a Digital Earth for methane emissions management with equal-area discrete global grids

We develop a spatially explicit methane inventory for Alberta’s upstream oil and gas sector using the rHEALPix Discrete Global Grid System. The objective is to demonstrate an equal-area, hierarchy-aware framework that assigns facility-reported emissions to native locations and supports multi-scale analysis and reporting. We compile monthly facility activity from Petrinex for 2020 to 2023, geolocate facilities using the Oil and Gas Infrastructure Mapping database, calculate methane emissions from venting, fuel use, and flaring using province-standard factors, and bin results to rHEALPix cells before exact aggregation to coarser levels. Our analysis revealed persistent high-emission hotspots, with 5% of grid cells accounting for 34% of total annual methane emissions. The equal-area lattice enables fair intensity comparisons across latitude, stable hotspot tracking over time, and mass-conserving aggregation that maintains consistent totals across resolutions. Practical implications include a standard spatial fabric that integrates facility reports, satellites, and ground sensors, provides persistent cell buckets for facility and asset management, enables accurate intensity comparisons across space and time with quantitative spatial resolution, preserves spatial integrity in visualization, supports consistent mass conserving aggregation at any scale with multiple granularities for analysis and reporting, allows precise hotspot tracking and trend monitoring, and informs targeted monitoring and survey design.