Coordinate Bar Units in BC Albers (EPSG:3005) - QGIS 3.10

Question

I am having some confusion with the coordinates bar in QGIS (3.10). Please correct me if I am wrong.

If using BC Albers (EPSG:3005) coordinate reference system (units are meters), the two values in the coordinate bar describe a distance in meters from a point.

e.g. A coordinate of 1047184,501563 should be (roughly middle) of Vancouver Island

• Where is this being measured from? (Reference point?)
• Which direction are we moving? (East then South?)
• How did you find this information?

Answer 1

All points in every projection are always relative to the {0,0} of the projection. For an Albers Conic Equal Area projection, this would generally be the intersection of the latitude of the "latitude_of_center" (45N) with the longitude of the "longitude_of_center" (126W), but there is a "false_easting" of 1 million meters applied (false origin values are often applied so that all coordinates in the appropriate mapping space are positive).

Therefore coordinate {1047184,501563} is 47.184 km east of 126W, and 501.563km north (not south) of 45N (in the units of the projection itself, not true distance).

The epsg.io link you provided contained all the information needed to answer this, more specifically, the Well-Known Text description at the bottom:

PROJCS["NAD83 / BC Albers",
    GEOGCS["NAD83",
        DATUM["North_American_Datum_1983",
            SPHEROID["GRS 1980",6378137,298.257222101,
                AUTHORITY["EPSG","7019"]],
            TOWGS84[0,0,0,0,0,0,0],
            AUTHORITY["EPSG","6269"]],
        PRIMEM["Greenwich",0,
            AUTHORITY["EPSG","8901"]],
        UNIT["degree",0.0174532925199433,
            AUTHORITY["EPSG","9122"]],
        AUTHORITY["EPSG","4269"]],
    PROJECTION["Albers_Conic_Equal_Area"],  <== Projection name
    PARAMETER["standard_parallel_1",50],
    PARAMETER["standard_parallel_2",58.5],
    PARAMETER["latitude_of_center",45],     <== Center Y
    PARAMETER["longitude_of_center",-126],  <== Center X
    PARAMETER["false_easting",1000000],     <== 1000km westward offset
    PARAMETER["false_northing",0],
    UNIT["metre",1,
        AUTHORITY["EPSG","9001"]],
    AXIS["Easting",EAST],
    AXIS["Northing",NORTH],
    AUTHORITY["EPSG","3005"]]