Geography of Canada - Unit 3 Lesson 11
Canada’s Ecozones
More information about Canada’s ecozones can be found at the following web pages.
http://www.ec.gc.ca/soer-ree/English/vignettes/default.cfm
http://canadianbiodiversity.mcgill.ca/english/ecozones/arcticcordillera/arcticcordillera.
htm
http://www.ccea.org/ecozones/
http://www.evergreen.ca/nativeplants/learn-more/taiga-cordillera.php
The Land
When the English poet Rupert Brooke visited Canada in 1913, what impressed him
most about this country was its "fresh loneliness." "There is no one else within reach,"
he wrote. "There never has been anyone; no one else is thinking of the lakes and hills
you see before you." The sense of being the first human observer in a land no other
person has ever imagined is never far away in Canada: it can come upon us just
beyond the city lights or out the back door of the cottage. Only 10% of Canada has ever
been permanently settled. Nine out of 10 Canadians live in cities and towns that hug the
southern border with the United States and vast reaches of the country bear few human
footprints. Canada is the second largest nation in the world, topped only by the Russian
Federation. It covers
nearly 7% of the
Earth’s surface, but
has only half of one
percent of its
population. The 1996
Census found that
there were nearly 30
million people in
Canada. In contrast,
Mexico City alone has
17 million inhabitants.
Space and silence,
abundance and
emptiness: the
paradoxes of Canada
register deep within
the Canadian psyche.
Canadian poet F. R.
Scott felt their
presence in the
Laurentian Shield: "Inarticulate, arctic,/Not written on by history, empty as paper,/It
leans away from the world with songs in its lakes/Older than love, and lost in the miles."
Canada stretches 5,500 kilometres from Cape Spear, Newfoundland, to the Yukon
Territory–Alaska border. From Middle Island in Lake Erie to Cape Columbia on
Ellesmere Island, it measures 4,600 kilometres. The southernmost point of Canada is at
the same latitude as northern California.
Canada is organized by province and territory: there are 10 provinces and, with the
creation of Nunavut on April 1, 1999, three territories. But nature has organized the land
by ecosystems, which transcend these political boundaries.
There are, in fact, 20 ecozones in Canada, of which 15 are terrestrial and five marine.
They are large geographical areas with their own distinctive combinations of climate,
landform, soils, water features, plants, animals and people.
Geography of Canada - Unit 3 Lesson 11
Canada’s Ecozones
True North
Like a vast triangle, the Canadian North runs from the tip of Ellesmere Island in the
Arctic Cordillera ecozone across the broader expanse of the northern Arctic to a wide
base in the southern Arctic just above the tree line. The North covers an area more than
four times the size of France. In diagonal bands, there are the mountains of the Arctic
Cordillera with perennial snow and ice, the barren lands of the northern Arctic, and the
southern Arctic with its tundra of moss and lichens.
Together, these
three ecozones
make up one-quarter
of the total area of
Canada, yet if you
evenly spaced their
inhabitants, each
person would have
some 85 square
kilometres.
For thousands of
years, the North has
been home to
Canada’s Inuit
people.
Here they have
resided in a land of long, cold winters where the ground never really thaws. Their
"walking habitat" has been the permafrost, a blanket of iced earth covering the land.
Geography of Canada - Unit 3 Lesson 11
Canada’s Ecozones
Arctic Cordillera
The spine of the Arctic Cordillera is formed by a vast chain of mountains that runs from
the Ellesmere and Bylot islands in the eastern Arctic to the Torngat Mountains of
Labrador. Here, one catches a glimpse of what most of Canada may have looked like
when it was covered with ice 15,000 years ago. Nearly three-quarters of the Cordillera
is ice or exposed bedrock. On Baffin Island alone, more than 10,000 glaciers have been
identified.
The Arctic Cordillera is a
landscape of deep valleys
merging along the coast
with steep-sided fjords,
which can rise more than
1,000 metres from the sea.
Extreme cold, high winds
and a lack of soil leave the
upper reaches almost
devoid of plants, animals
and people. July and
August are the only months
with mean daily
temperatures above
freezing. Except in the
southerly region, it is very
dry, typically receiving just
250 millimetres of
precipitation a year. (That’s the same amount that falls annually in the Sahara desert.)
In or near the rich marine waters of the region, polar bears search for ringed and
bearded seals or beached whales. The region is very sparsely populated. Pond Inlet
and Clyde River—part of Nunavut as of April 1999—are two of the larger communities,
each with just under 2,000 people.
Geography of Canada - Unit 3 Lesson 11
Canada’s Ecozones
Northern Arctic
The northern Arctic is Canada’s polar desert. It covers
most of the non-mountainous areas of the Arctic
islands and Nunavut, and a part of the Northwest
Territories and northern Quebec.
Snow can fall any month of the year here, and it
usually stays on the ground from September to June.
Only 20 days a year on average are frost-free. But the
average precipitation in the northern Arctic is
extremely low, about 200 millimetres annually. By way
of comparison, the country’s wettest city, Prince
Rupert, British Columbia, receives 2,500 millimetres a
year. The Arctic Bay holds Canada’s all-time record for
dryness: in 1949, less than 13 millimetres of
precipitation fell there. Yet moss and lichen thrive in
the polar desert; there are more than 600 recorded
species.
Iqaluit on Baffin Island is the largest community in the
northern Arctic, with a population of 4,200.
Geography of Canada - Unit 3 Lesson 11
Canada’s Ecozones
Southern Arctic
Early European visitors to the southern Arctic, which includes
the northern mainland from the Richardson Mountains in the
Yukon Territory to Ungava Bay in northern Quebec, called
these the "barren lands" because they were treeless. Tundra
covers more than 58% of the land with its small flowering
plants, mosses and lichens. Only in a few protected areas do
dwarf trees grow. The bonsai of the North—creeping birch and
dwarf willow a few centimetres high—may be over a century
old.
But the clock strikes 12 twice a day in broad daylight during the
Arctic summer. Plants can leaf and flower in a matter of weeks.
In spring and summer, the tundra turns to green, and in the
autumn to rich reds, oranges, purples and yellows. Purple
saxifrage, with its five-petal blossoms, flowers in gravelly spots
high up in the mountains, and pink moss campion blazes
across much of Baffin Island.
The southern Arctic is home to the world’s biggest
concentration of free-roaming large mammals, the barren-ground
caribou, which began migrating through this area after the last Ice Age
ended. For countless years, the Dene and Inuit have used the rivers to
reach the caribou, muskox and moose. Rankin Inlet on the west
shore of Hudson Bay is the largest settlement, with a population of
slightly more than 2,000.
Grade 9 Geography of Canada - Unit 3 Lesson 11
Canada’s Ecozones
The Seas North and East
In the high Arctic, fjords, straits, channels
and open waters surround the hundreds of
islands in the Queen Elizabeth chain, with
sea ice jammed fast to the land and many
glaciers. A gigantic icecap floats near the
top of the world in the Arctic Basin, which
extends from the southern edge of the
Beaufort Sea to the Arctic Ocean. Here, ice
islands measure several square kilometres.
Along the Atlantic coast, major ocean
currents flow from Ellesmere Island to
Newfoundland’s Avalon Peninsula, on their
way circling as many as 440,000 islands.
Sailors have dubbed the stretches of ocean
from Greenland to south of Newfoundland
"Iceberg Alley."
These areas teem with sea animal and bird
life. On the Atlantic coast, some 22 species
of whale and six of seal co-exist, along with
some of the world’s largest sea bird
colonies. Farther north, at the edges of the
ice pack, are walrus, polar bears, beluga
whales and seals. More than 90% of the
world’s population of Ross’s goose have
their nesting ground in the Queen Maud
Gulf migratory bird sanctuary on the
northern mainland tundra. This protected
area shelters the largest variety of geese in
North America.
Rich in mineral and hydrocarbon reserves, the North is Canada’s last natural resource
frontier, containing 59% of the country’s estimated oil resources and 48% of its potential
gas resources. But there has been little substantial development since the 1980s, due
to low crude oil prices and global recessions.
Grade 9 Geography of Canada - Unit 3 Lesson 11
Canada’s Ecozones
Land of little sticks
Because of its spindly, sparse trees, the land of Canada’s Athapascan people is
sometimes called "the land of little sticks." This subarctic belt carries the Russian name
"taiga," denoting the subarctic coniferous forest that begins where the tundra ends, and,
globally, the northern edge of the boreal forest
that runs from Siberia to Scandinavia and from
Labrador to Alaska.
In Canada, the Taiga Plains, the Taiga Shield
and the Hudson Plains stretch from the
Mackenzie Delta in the Northwest Territories to
the Labrador coast and cover almost one-quarter
of Canada’s land mass.
For plants and animals, Taiga regions are less
biologically productive and diverse than more
southerly areas, but they do have important
mineral resources, including two major hydroelectric developments, Churchill Falls, Labrador,
and La Grande, Quebec, and part of a third, the
Churchill-Nelson development in Manitoba. So
far, mining outfits have focussed on gold, silver,
uranium and iron.
In 1993, prospectors looking for diamond
deposits in Labrador found instead one of the
world’s richest deposits of nickel at Voisey’s Bay on the Labrador coast. The deposit is
estimated to hold 100 million tonnes of ore of excellent quality, making it the most
significant mineral find in Canada in the last 20 years. The Norman Wells oil field, which
lies under the Mackenzie River northwest of Yellowknife, is the nation’s fourth largest
producer of oil.
Yellowknife is Canada’s coldest city in the winter; in summer, it’s the sunniest. Nighttime temperatures average nearly –30°C in December, January and February. But from
June to August, Yellowknife enjoys more than 1,000 hours of sunshine.
Grade 9 Geography of Canada - Unit 3 Lesson 11
Canada’s Ecozones
Taiga Plains
At the centre of the Taiga Plains is Canada’s largest river, the Mackenzie, and its
tributaries. The Mackenzie drains a total area of 1.8 million square kilometres and is
more than 4,200 kilometres long: almost the distance from
Montréal to Vancouver. It begins at Great Slave Lake,
ferrying water, silt and clay north past towns and fishing
camps, right on to the Arctic Ocean.
The Taiga Plains take in part of northeastern British
Columbia and northern Alberta, but 90% of the region is
located in the Northwest Territories. The Plains are
bounded on the west by the foothills of the Mackenzie
Mountains and on the east by two huge lakes, Great Bear
and Great Slave. At more than 31,000 square kilometres,
Great Bear is the biggest lake within Canada and the
eighth largest in the world.
In this region, snow and freshwater ice persist for six to
eight months. Black spruce trees grow on low-lying plains.
Much of the area rests on continuous or patchy permafrost, and soils are often
waterlogged.
Anthropologists contend that human settlement began here around 11,000 years ago,
near the end of the last Ice Age, when the Paleo-Indian people began moving through
an ice-free passage stretching down the Mackenzie Valley to western Alberta. By the
late 18th century, the rivers and portages of the region were part of the fur trade route
from Hudson Bay to the Mackenzie Basin. The Mackenzie Valley is one of North
America’s major migration routes for ducks, geese and swans coming to breed along
the Arctic coast.
Limestone deposits in this region contain visible fossils of the marine
creatures that lived here hundreds of millions of years ago. The
remains of such early life forms helped create natural reservoirs of
oil and gas in the pockets and cracks of sedimentary rock. Fossil
fuel reserves are being exploited in the Liard Plateau and at the
Norman Wells field.
The southern portion of this region is the home of the world’s largest
wood bison herd. It contains the only known nesting site of the endangered
Grus americana, better known as the whooping crane, and the sprawling PeaceAthabasca delta, a wetland of global significance. Among the larger communities are
Fort Nelson, British Columbia, with 4,400 people, and Hay River and Inuvik in the
Northwest Territories, with 3,600 and 3,300 inhabitants respectively.
Grade 9 Geography of Canada - Unit 3 Lesson 11
Canada’s Ecozones
Taiga Shield
Formed near the dawn of earth’s geological history, the world’s most ancient rocks are
found on the Taiga Shield north of Great Slave Lake. This vast Shield, more than 1.3
million square kilometres in size, is one of Canada’s largest ecozones. It lies on either
side of Hudson Bay, with its eastern roots in central Quebec and Labrador and its
western in the Northwest Territories, Nunavut, and northern Manitoba, Saskatchewan
and Alberta. The Taiga Shield is, in fact, an ecological crossroad where the climates,
soils, plants, birds and animals of two worlds meet—the Arctic to the north and the
boreal forest to the south.
The Taiga is a study in bush, bedrock and water: millions of lakes and wetlands have
been carved out by successive waves of glacial erosion and fill natural depressions in
the underlying rock. Open forests of stunted black spruce and jack pine adjoin tundra
shrubs and meadows. The region has the largest concentration of long, sinuous eskers
in Canada, which are narrow ridges of sand, gravel and boulders. The abundance of
water attracts migratory birds and a thriving animal life. The arctic tern finds the
southern limit of its breeding range here. The smallest of the gulls, the tern undertakes
the longest known migration of any bird. Wintering as far south as the Antarctic and
breeding north of the Arctic Circle, it makes an annual round trip of 35,000 kilometres.
Many communities have sprung
up near mines or hydro-electric
developments, including the
largest centre, Yellowknife.
Miners extract uranium in
northern Saskatchewan, gold
near Yellowknife, and iron ore in
Quebec and Labrador. In 1991,
diamonds were discovered in
the Northwest Territories. The
Ekati mine is estimated to hold
about 6% of the value of the
world’s diamond production.
Grade 9 Geography of Canada - Unit 3 Lesson 11
Canada’s Ecozones
Hudson Plains
Canada holds fully one-quarter of the globe’s wetlands, or areas of land covered with
water for part of the day or the year. The largest extensive wetland in the world is in the
Hudson Plains ecozone, which runs
along the western and southern
shores of Hudson Bay and covers
nearly 370,000 square kilometres.
Almost three times larger than Nova
Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince
Edward Island combined, the Plains
are centred in northern Ontario and
extend into northeastern Manitoba
and western Quebec.
During the last Ice Age, gigantic
glaciers depressed the region of
Hudson Bay, and ocean waters
flooded areas up to 300 kilometres
inland from the current coastline. When the ice retreated, drainage was blocked and
large lakes formed at the margin. The flat terrain, impervious soil and poor drainage
fostered wetlands: tidal flats, coastal marshes, peatlands and swamps.
For early explorers and fur traders like Médard Chouart Des Groseilliers and PierreEsprit Radisson in the 17th century, this was a gateway to the interior of central Canada
and rich fur resources. But people living in the coastal fortifications set up by the
Hudson’s Bay Company faced long winters and insect-ridden summers. They called this
the land of "bog and fog." Hudson Bay moderates the temperature of the lowlands
during the warmer months. But when the bay is ice-bound, cold air lingering over the
lowlands makes for chilly winters. The abundance of water in this region made possible
the massive hydro-electric power development in James Bay, the southern
appendix of Hudson Bay.
In summer, millions of snow geese, migrating from as far south as
the Gulf of Mexico, nest and rear their young in the Hudson
Plains. The larger communities include Moosonee, Ontario, with
almost 2,000 people, Attawapiskat, Ontario, with 1,200, and
Churchill, Manitoba, with slightly more than 1,000.
Grade 9 Geography of Canada - Unit 3 Lesson 11
Canada’s Ecozones
The Shield
"Geography is destiny," wrote John Jerome, "never more persuasively so than in
Canada. [The] nation’s central core, its defining fundament, is the Shield, [that]
overturned frying pan of ancient granite that stretches from the Great Lakes to Hudson
Bay and from the Labrador coast to the shores of the Arctic Ocean."
You may have run into the Precambrian Shield digging post-holes for your deck. You
might be part of a road-building crew with no explosive powerful enough to blast it apart.
This monumental sheet of rock buttresses almost two-thirds of Canada. An unyielding
reminder of the elemental processes that created the Earth, most of the Shield took
form in the earliest hours of the planet’s history, well over one billion years ago.
Where primal rock meets northern forest lies Canada’s largest terrestrial ecozone, the
Boreal Shield. The Boreal stretches across parts of six provinces from the east coast of
Newfoundland to northern Alberta, covering more than 1.8 million square kilometres, or
almost 20% of Canada’s land mass. Appropriately, the boreal (or northern) regions of
the world take their name from Boreas, the Greek god of the north wind.
The aerial view of Shield country offers stretches of endless water and trees. Not
surprisingly, rivers and lakes in the Boreal Shield account for 22% of Canada’s
freshwater, and the timber-productive forest land makes up close to half the country’s
total. More than one-third of our hydro-electric capacity is located on rivers originating in
or flowing through this region. Many large drainage basins have their headwaters here:
the Nelson and Churchill rivers in Manitoba, the St. Lawrence in Ontario, and the
Eastmain,
Rupert, Nottaway and Broadback in Quebec.
Some 3,800 kilometres long, the Shield equals the distance from Halifax
to Regina. Much of it is still wilderness. Over 80% is forested, mostly
by white and black spruce, balsam fir, and tamarack in the north and
some deciduous trees toward the south. Long, cold winters and
short, warm summers are moderated by maritime conditions
on the Atlantic coast and along the Great Lakes.
The first
inhabitants of the Boreal Shield, the Beothuk, Algonquians and
Iroquois, and later the Europeans attracted by timber, fur and mineral resources, knew
this area was a storehouse of natural resources. Many communities in the region,
including larger centres such as St. John’s, Newfoundland, Chicoutimi, Quebec, and
Sudbury and Thunder Bay, Ontario, have developed around the rich resource base in
fisheries, hydropower, mining and forestry.
Grade 9 Geography of Canada - Unit 3 Lesson 11
Canada’s Ecozones
Waterways
In the 18th century, parties of voyageurs and fur traders leaving Montréal paddled and
portaged to the heart of the continent. They often traveled the routes developed by First
Nations people in the birchbark canoes they had created. Explorers could push on by
water to the mountains of the far West. West of the Rocky Mountains, rivers like the
Fraser and the Columbia provided access to the Pacific Ocean. Rivers were the route
the fur traders took into the Northwest Territories to set up trading posts.
Winding through or around formidable
obstacles like dense forest, high mountain
ranges and the impenetrable Shield, the
waterways have been Canada’s lifeline.
Water gave Canadians east–west avenues
across the country above the U.S. border and
linked southern and northern Canada.
"Without the rivers," Canadian novelist Hugh
MacLennan observed, "the early nation could
never have survived."
The supply of water in Canada seems inexhaustible. Some 15% of all of the coastline in
the world is Canadian. Our extensive seawater wetlands include the coastal areas of
Hudson Bay and James Bay, the marshes at Kamouraska in Quebec and Tintamarre in
New Brunswick, and the Fraser River estuary in British Columbia.
Among Canada’s many freshwater wetlands are the marshes in the Great Lakes Basin
and along the shores of the St. Lawrence River, the Peace-Athabasca delta in northern
Alberta, the Saskatchewan River and Red River deltas in Manitoba, the peatlands of
Newfoundland and the Fraser River delta, and large areas of muskeg in northern
Canada.
In the Prairie "pothole" region—some 750,000 square kilometres stretching across
southern Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba—millions of depressions fill with water
from melting snow and rain in the spring. Some form lakes while others dry up in a few
weeks. They provide homes, breeding or nesting areas for innumerable fish, birds and
other animals.
Much of our abundant water is unavailable for human use: 90% of Canadians live near
the southern border, while 60% of the freshwater flows north to empty into the Arctic
Ocean. But the water within human reach has been heavily stressed. Many wetlands
have been lost and others are in danger. In southern Ontario, more than 70% of the
wetlands have vanished; they have been drained or filled in for people’s needs, such as
roads, farmlands, industry and housing. Nearly three-quarters of the Prairie wetland
margins have been degraded by agricultural practices.
Grade 9 Geography of Canada - Unit 3 Lesson 11
Canada’s Ecozones
Atlantic Maritime
In their legend of the creation of the universe, the Mi’Kmaq people of Prince Edward
Island tell how The Great Spirit created the world and the people, and then found he
had some dark red clay left over. Carefully fashioning the clay into a crescent form, he
created an island: Prince Edward Island, as we now know it. Originally, though, the
Mi’Kmaq named it Abegweit, which means "land cradled on the waves."
The name is an apt one for the Atlantic Maritime ecozone. No one in Nova Scotia lives
more than 50 kilometres from the sea. This is a land of islands, peninsulas, isthmuses
and fertile valleys. It includes the provinces of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince
Edward Island, the Îles-de-la-Madeleine and the area of Quebec from the Gaspé
Peninsula southwest to the U.S. border below Sherbrooke. It has only 2% of Canada’s
total land and freshwater area but 11,200 kilometres of coastline.
The climate is moderate, cool and moist. During
late spring and early summer, the chill of the
Labrador Current mixes with the warmth of the Gulf
Stream to produce banks of sea fog over coastal
areas. Storms are more frequent here than
anywhere else in Canada.
No single resource has influenced economic
development in the Atlantic more than fish. Since
word of their existence spread to Europe 500 years
ago, Canada’s rich fisheries have been heavily
exploited. Even prior to the advance of European
explorers like John Cabot, they were also a
resource both for the Aboriginal peoples and the
Norsemen. In recent times, the cod and other
groundfish stocks have seriously declined. This has
put severe economic pressure on the region,
particularly the many coastal communities where
fishing has been the primary industry and a way of
life.
Forests, mainly of mixed woods, cover 90% of Atlantic Maritime land, but only a few
pockets of true old-growth forest remain, since most areas have been harvested several
times. Some 9% of the region is farmland, with major crops including forage for
livestock, grains, potatoes and other vegetables. Halifax, Nova Scotia is the largest city,
followed by Saint John and Moncton, New Brunswick.
Grade 9 Geography of Canada - Unit 3 Lesson 11
Canada’s Ecozones
Mixedwood Plains
More than one of every two Canadians
lower Great Lakes–St. Lawrence River
Mixedwood Plains ecozone. The most populated
Canada, it is also the smallest. It stretches from
southern Ontario along the shoreline of the St.
Lawrence River to Québec.
Almost 85% of this ecozone’s residents live in urban
centres along the Québec–Windsor corridor. This
corridor contains 12 of Canada’s 25 most
centres, including the largest cities, Toronto and
The region supports the commercial and industrial
Canada. Its extensive waterways lead into the middle
rich, fertile soils, relatively mild climate (at least in
weather), abundant rainfall and access to the markets
States have given it all the right conditions for
lives along the
valley in the
ecozone in
populous
Montréal.
heartland of
of the continent. Its
terms of Canadian
of the eastern United
commercial growth.
But human settlement has come at a price. At one time, more species of trees grew
here than in any other part of Canada: even the cucumber tree and the sassafras.
Today, less than 10% of the original forest remains. In its place are farms, orchards,
cities
and highways.
Canada’s most productive agricultural soils are in the Mixedwood
Plains. With 9% of Canada’s land, the region yields 37% of its
agricultural production. The Niagara Peninsula, famous for its
orchards and vineyards, is the warmest and most intensively
cultivated area.
Downtown Canada
While most of Canada is sparsely settled, Canadians are increasingly concentrated in
urban places. Between 1971 and 1996, the urban population grew 37% to 22.5 million
people. Some 78% of Canadians live in and around cities. We are concentrated in four
of our smallest ecozones: the Mixedwood Plains, the Atlantic Maritime, the Prairies and
the Pacific Maritime.
Urban growth has meant the loss of prime agricultural land. Since 1901, the area
cultivated for agriculture in Canada has increased fivefold. More than half of the land
converted to urban use between 1971 and 1996 was high-quality land, the kind most
valuable for agriculture.
Grade 9 Geography of Canada - Unit 3 Lesson 11
Canada’s Ecozones
Cordilleras and Coastline
The mountainous and coastal west of Canada takes in four terrestrial ecozones. In the
north, the Taiga Cordillera covers most of the northern part of the Yukon Territory and
the southwest corner of the Northwest Territories. In the middle reaches, the Boreal
Cordillera includes the southern part of the Yukon Territory, which has most of the
Territory’s people, and the northern half of British Columbia.
The Montane Cordillera, from north-central British Columbia southeast to southwest
Alberta, is the most diverse ecozone in Canada, with some of the coldest and hottest
conditions anywhere in the country. Canada’s wettest climate occurs in the Pacific
Maritime zone on the
mainland coast and
offshore islands of British
Columbia.
British Columbia has set
many of Canada’s
weather records. The
records include most
precipitation and the
greatest snowfalls in a
day, a month and a year.
For sheer cold, though,
the record goes to Snag,
Yukon Territory, where
the temperature
plummeted to –63°C one
day in 1947.
Grade 9 Geography of Canada - Unit 3 Lesson 11
Canada’s Ecozones
Taiga Cordillera
The Taiga Cordillera is so wild and unspoiled that it hosts Canada’s largest
concentration of wolverines, the solitary nomads of the wild. It has some of Canada’s
largest waterfalls and deepest canyons, along with about 300 people, most of whom live
in Old Crow, the Yukon
Territory’s most northerly
community. The land ranges
from treeless tundra in the north
to alpine vegetation and lowland
forests farther south. It is
marked by rugged mountain
peaks and great wetlands and
spruce-lined valleys.
On a single mountain, one may
see completely different
landscapes: the western slope
will be lushly covered in plants
while the eastern is dry and arid.
This is because the clouds deposit most of their moisture on the western slopes before
continuing eastward. The highest waterfall in the country, Della Falls at Della Lake,
British Columbia, descends 440 metres to earth. By contrast, Canada’s most impressive
waterfall, the Horseshoe Falls on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls, is only 57 metres
high, while Toronto’s CN Tower, the world’s tallest free-standing structure, is 550
metres in height.
Grade 9 Geography of Canada - Unit 3 Lesson 11
Canada’s Ecozones
The Boreal and Montane Cordilleras
In the mountainous Boreal Cordillera, the St. Elias Mountains in the southwest corner of
the Yukon Territory include Mount Logan, the highest point in Canada at just less than
6,000 metres, and 12 other peaks more than 4,600 metres tall. The St. Elias Icefields
are the largest non-polar icefields in the world and feed five of the world’s longest
glaciers outside the polar regions. This ecozone has many important mineral deposits,
especially copper, gold and silver. The largest centre is Whitehorse, Yukon Territory.
The Montane Cordillera is
Canada’s most varied
ecozone with a covering of
alpine tundra, dense
evergreen forests and dry
sagebrush. This rugged area
has several large interior
plains, including two major
agricultural areas: Creston
Valley and the Okanagan
Valley. Most of the original
grasslands in the Okanagan
have been replaced by
crops, especially orchards
and vineyards. The
headwaters of the Fraser
and Columbia rivers lie in
the Montane region.
Coal mines in Alberta and British Columbia are important in this area, and forestry is the
major industry on the lower- and middle-mountain slopes. Pulp and paper mills are
located throughout the ecozone. The largest cities are Kelowna and Kamloops, British
Columbia.
Grade 9 Geography of Canada - Unit 3 Lesson 11
Canada’s Ecozones
Pacific Maritime and Marine
Canada is the largest exporter of forest products in the world, and British Columbia
produces about 45% of the Canadian total. The forest productivity of the Pacific
Maritime region is the highest in the country. For well over a century, logging and
related forest industries have been the economic mainstay of many communities in this
region. Nurtured by abundant moisture and a long frost-free period, the coastal
temperate rain forest covers more than 10 million hectares. Over the past 120 years,
more than 2 million hectares of the rain forest have been clear-cut. Still, the tallest trees
in Canada grow along the west coast of British Columbia. Many of the largest are
several centuries old, and some have trunks that measure more than 2 metres in
diameter.
Almost three-quarters of
British Columbians live in the
Georgia Basin of this ecozone,
which includes Victoria and the
large urban centres of the
Lower Mainland. Vancouver,
Canada’s third largest city, is
here. In the Pacific Maritime,
average temperatures range
between 12 and 18°C in July,
and to the envy of Canadians
from colder climates, the
weather is mild even in
January, with averages
between 4 and 6°C.
People have inhabited coastal British Columbia and the Queen Charlotte Islands, along
the Pacific Marine ecozone, for at least 8,000 years. The Haida people of this region
were exceptional sea-voyagers. Sea ice is largely absent and the waters abound in
animal and bird life. Some 3,800 species of plankton—3.5% of the world’s total—furnish
rich food sources for fish.
Grade 9 Geography of Canada - Unit 3 Lesson 11
Canada’s Ecozones
The Central Plains
On the flat, low-lying plains of the Prairies, horizons extend as far as the eye can see.
Some 97% of Prairie land is classed as agricultural. To the north are the Boreal Plains,
84% wreathed in forests. Together, these two regions make up the Central Plains of
Canada. They encompass much of the Prairie provinces (Alberta, Saskatchewan and
Manitoba) and edge into the Northwest Territories and the Peace River region of British
Columbia.
The Boreal Plains
Arching from Peace River country to the southeast corner of Manitoba, the Boreal
Plains retain the long, cold winters of the North, but the nearly three-quarters of a million
people who live here also enjoy moderately warm, if short, summers and a reasonable
growing season.
A green scarf of timber covers 84% of the region, and forestry is the major industry.
Farming has made considerable inroads in the southerly and northwesterly fringes,
especially the Peace River area, but less than 20% of the total land is devoted to
agriculture. Besides forestry, mining, oil and gas exploration and production, hunting
and trapping are important activities. Among the larger communities are Wood Buffalo
and Grande Prairie, Alberta.
Grade 9 Geography of Canada - Unit 3 Lesson 11
Canada’s Ecozones
The Prairies
From a base at the U.S. border, the Canadian Prairies sweep from the Rocky
Mountains in Alberta to the Red River Valley in Manitoba, across the southern third of
the Prairie provinces. With flat or gently rolling terrain and productive soil, the Prairies
hold more than 85% of Canada’s cropland and 84% of its rangeland and pasture.
Saskatchewan alone has about one-third of all the farmland in Canada, with more than
250,000 square kilometres. Canola and wheat are major crops. But the economy of the
region has diversified, and mining is the second most important industry. Alberta
accounts for about half of Canada’s mineral production, most of it from petroleum and
natural gas.
The longest continuous belt of settlement in Canada winds through Manitoba,
Saskatchewan and Alberta. More than 80% of the people live in urban areas, and there
are five major cities: Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Saskatoon and Regina. More than
any other part of Canada, the Prairies have been altered by human activity. Less than 1
percent of the original tall-grass Prairie remains – the grass has been supplanted by
crops. Habitats for many wildlife species have been reduced. Yet, even today, more
than half of all North American ducks are born in the wetlands of this region.
Nature can take dramatic turns on the
Prairies. Because the neighbouring Rocky
Mountains block the moist air from the
Pacific, the climate is usually dry, with short,
w arm summers and long, cold winters. But in
the depths of freezing weather, Prairiedwellers can suddenly experience a chinook:
a warm, dry wind bringing summer-like heat.
The most extreme temperature change ever
measured in Canada took place during a
chinook in Pincher Creek, Alberta, in January
1992, when the thermometer shot from –
19°C to 22°C in just one hour.
Writing about growing up in the Cypress Hills
country of Saskatchewan early in this
century, Wallace Stegner caught the dramatic
intensity of the Canadian heartland:
"Desolate? Forbidding?" he asked. "There was never a country that in its good
moments was more beautiful. Even in drought or dust storm or blizzard it is the reverse
of monotonous... You don’t get out of the wind, but learn to lean and squint against it.
You don’t escape sky and sun, but wear them in your eyeballs and on your back... At
noon the total sun pours on your single head; at sunrise or sunset you throw a shadow
a hundred yards long... This is a land to mark the sparrow’s fall."
Grade 9 Geography of Canada - Unit 3 Lesson 11
Canada’s Ecozones - FACTS
The definition of an ecozone: A region with similar physical
characteristics (e.g., climate, vegetation, soils, wildlife) and human
uses.
Ecozones are a useful idea because they highlight connections
between important characteristics (e.g., climate impacts on
vegetation, vegetation impacts on wildlife).
Another name for ecozone is bioregion.
Canada has 15 terrestrial (land) ecozones and five marine (water)
ecozones.
Sharbot Lake is located on the very northern edge of the Mixwood
Plains ecozone. This ecozone is Canada’s smallest ecozone in size,
but Canada’s biggest ecozone with respect to human population and
human activity.
A change in one characteristic in an ecozone can lead to changes in
other characteristics within that ecozone. For example, a shift in
temperature could impact plant growth that, in turn, could prevent a
herbivore (plant-eating animal) from finding sufficient food for
survival.