Canada’s Ecozones

What is an Ecozone?

Canada is divided into 15 broad terrestrial ecozones, and 5 marine ecozones. These are very extensive geographical areas, each with a distinct combination of climate, landforms and soils, water features, animals, vegetation, and people.

Ecozones of Canada

How many Ecozones in Canada are there?

15 Terrestrial, 5 Marine

Arctic Cordillera

A land frozen in time Located along the north-eastern edge of Nunavut and on the northernmost tip of Labrador, the Arctic Cordillera is Canada’s “Far North.” The zone is an area of vast polar ice fields, ice-covered mountains soaring to 2500 metres, and valleys and fjords that cut deep into the crystalline rock.

How would you describe this region looking at the picture?

The Nothern Arctic

What is the population of the Nothern Arctic?

The Northern Arctic takes in most of the islands off the northern shores of Nunavut and the Northwest Territories, as well as the northern tip of Ungava. Peninsula, in Quebec. Today, the Northern Arctic has a population of just over 16,000 people, about 80 percent of them Inuit. These people hunt, fish, trap, or work in ecotourism or with government agencies.

The Southern Arctic

The Southern Arctic ecozone stretches for almost 2000 kilometres along the northern mainland of Canada.

Glaciers retreated from this area almost 9000 years ago, but still remaining are the scratch marks of the rocks that they slowly dragged across the Precambrian bedrock. Reminders of the glaciers can also be seen in the many lakes of the zone

What is the name of Canada’s longest river that runs through here?

The Taiga Plains

As its name implies, this is generally flat or gently rolling country

The Taiga Plains are located mainly in the western part of the Northwest Territories. Bordered by the Mackenzie Mountains on the west, they are distinguished, in the east, by the presence of two very large lakes: Great Bear and Great Slave.

Are plains mountains or flat land?

The Taiga Shield

The world’s oldest rocks can be found here. Smoothed by glaciers as late as 10,000 years ago, the landscape is generally rolling and now because of the glaciers carving the land, it contains thousands of lakes

Covering 1,300,000 square kilometres, or 14 percent of Canada, the Taiga Shield is the country’s third largest ecozone

What caused the shape of this rock?

The Taiga Shield

this area offers a stunning array of landforms – rugged mountains, broad plateaux, labyrinthine caves dripping with stalactites, mighty rivers crashing though steep canyons, and precipitous waterfalls

Human beings have lived in the Taiga Cordillera for between 20,000 and 40,000 years or more, making it probably the longest inhabited area of the land we now call Canada

The Hudson Plains This ecozone is located at the southern end of Hudson Bay.

One of the towns located in this area is Churchill, Manitoba. What is Churchill famous for?

There is only one National Park on the Hudson Plains – Wapusk, Cree for “White Bear,” a reminder of the polar bears that inhabit this protected area. The female bears are known to travel up to 80 kilometres inland to dig earth dens in the permafrost for giving birth to and protecting their young

The Boreal Plains

What is the primary industry in this ecozone?

How do you think foresting can affect the wildlife in the area?

The Boreal Plains are a rich habitats for fish, birds, insects, and waterfowl (especially ducks). It’s estimated, infact, that about half of North America’s migratory birds stop off at these potholes.

The Boreal Shield

Have you ever seen the Canadian Shield? What are two typical features of the shield shown by the picture

Canadian Shield was formed by volcanic activity. Soil is very poor.

Many different forms of wildlife including Beaver and loons. Other typical wildlife include rare woodlan

The Boreal Cordillera

What are the name of the mountains found in this area?

Do you think volcanoes can exist in this climate?

2787 metre high Mount Edziza, a volcano that last erupted over four million years ago.

The Boreal Cordillera is located in the mid section of the Canadian Rocky Mountain System.

The Pacific Maritime

Is the Pacific Ring Of Fire a Johnny Cash song?

The Ring of Fire has 452 volcanoes and is home to over 75% of the world's active and dormant volcanoes

Canada’s highest peak, Mount Logan, is located here, rising to 5959 metres above sea level in the Yukon’s Kluane National Park, in the most northerly part of the zone.

The Montane Cordillera

Why should early settlers found this region difficult to cross?

The Montane Cordillera ecozone is famous for its enormous mountains and numerous glaciers. The glaciers were formed around 20,000 years ago, when the climate was much cooler

This region is known for forestry and coal mining.

The Prairies

Why are the Praries referred to as “the bread basket” of Canada?

Why do you think the Praries are so flat? What do you think shaped them?

Like the adjoining Boreal Plains to the north, glaciers have largely flattened the land here, leaving behind a thick layer of dark, humus-rich topsoil (called chernozem, or black earth) that has made the Prairies very fertile,

The Atlantic Maritime

What Eastern provinces make up the Atlantic Maritime Ecozone?

Why is the Bay of Fundy so famous?

The Bay of Fundy tides are among the highest in the world, changing twice a day, every six hours and thirteen minutes. With each tide, the bay flushes 100 cubic km of water, roughly equal to the entire daily discharge of all the rivers in the world combined.

The Mixwood Plains

The smallest of the ecozones, but the most populated. It is the industrial and commercial heartland of Canada.

One of the defining physical features of this ecozone is the Niagara Escarpment.

What type of tourist attractions might you find at the Niagara Escarpment? What waterfall is part of the escarpment?