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Wetlands

Wetlands cover about 14 per cent of the land area of Canada, and are the natural habitat of over 600 species of plants, animals and insects. In addition to providing a home for these plants and animals, wetlands are an essential part of the environment because they prevent flooding, filter toxins, store groundwater and limit erosion. The most common wetland habitats are swamps, marshes, and bogs.

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Fjord

In oceanographic terminology, fjords are estuaries, ie, semienclosed bodies of water in which seawater is measurably diluted by fresh water from land drainage.

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Old Crow Plain

The vegetation is of the tundra type, with outliers of the boreal spruce forest; willow thickets line the course of the Old Crow River.

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Hells Gate

Hells Gate is a narrow rocky gorge of the Fraser River Canyon south of Boston Bar, British Columbia.

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Meteors, Meteorites and Impact Craters

The solar system contains many objects smaller than the planets (or their satellites) travelling in individual orbits about the SUN; space between the planets also contains myriad dust grains in the micron size range. Near Earth, dust concentrations are only a few hundred particles per cubic kilometre, but 35 000 to 100 000 t of extraterrestrial material enters the atmosphere annually, swept up by our planet from debris that is in its path or crosses its path.

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Quill Lakes

The Quill Lakes are three connected saline lakes in southeastern Saskatchewan. They are located 150 km north of Regina and 152 km east of Saskatoon. From west to east the lakes are named Big Quill, Middle Quill (also known as Mud Lake) and Little Quill. Despite its name, at 181 km2 Little Quill is the second largest of the three lakes. Big Quill is the largest at 307 km2. The Quill Lakes’ elevation is 516 m.

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Ice Cap

​Ice caps are large masses of ice that rest on land and cover most of the underlying landscape.

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Saguenay River Fjord

The Saguenay Fjord was carved out near the very edge of the North American continental ice sheet. This fjord has the very rare characteristic of being intracontinental.

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Landslide

A landslide is a downward and outward movement of a soil mass that formed part of a slope.

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Permafrost

Permafrost is ground remaining at or below 0°C continuously for at least two years. About 50 per cent of Canada is underlain by permafrost, mainly in the Arctic Archipelago, Yukon, Northwest Territories and Nunavut.

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Glaciers in Canada

A glacier is a large mass of ice, formed at least in part on land, that shows evidence of present or past movement. It is formed by the compaction and recrystallization of snow into ice crystals and commonly also contains air, water and rock debris. With approximately 200,000 km2 of glacier coverage in the Arctic and the West, Canada is home to a significant percentage of the world’s glaciers. By 2100, however, scientists predict that those in Alberta and British Columbia will have lost 70 per cent of their 2005 volume due to climate change.

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Rocky Mountain Trench

The Rocky Mountain Trench is a long and deep valley extending approximately 1,500 km from the Bitterroot Valley in northwest Montana through British Columbia to the Liard Plain just south of the Yukon Territory. Its predominantly flat floor is 3–20 km wide and ranges in elevation between 600 m and 1,000 m above sea level. With walls made of sedimentary, volcanic and igneous rock, the Trench is sometimes referred to as the “Valley of a Thousand Peaks” because of the towering mountain ranges on either side: the Rocky Mountains to the east and the Columbia, Omineca and Cassiar mountains to the west. Humans have relied on the rich resources provided by this distinctive landscape from pre-colonial times to the present.

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Yukon River

At 3,185 km (1,149 km of which lie in Canada), the Yukon River is among the longest rivers in the country (see also Longest Rivers in Canada). Its headwaters are in the northwest corner of British Columbia, at the province’s border with the Yukon. It flows north and northwest across the Yukon into Alaska, then west to Norton Sound on the Bering Sea. Within the large central plateau of the Yukon, ringed by the Mackenzie Mountains to the east and the St. Elias range to the southwest, the Yukon River and its tributaries form the region’s dominant drainage basin.

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National Parks of Canada

Canada’s national parks are protected areas established under federal legislation to preserve Canada’s natural heritage. They are administered by Parks Canada, a government agency that evolved from the world’s first national parks service, the Dominion Parks Branch, established in 1911. The National Parks System Plan, developed in 1970, divided Canada into 39 natural regions and set the goal of representing each region with at least one national park. Canada now has 48 national parks and national park reserves in 30 of these regions. In total, the parks cover more than 340,000 km2, which is over 3 per cent of Canada’s landmass. They protect important land and marine habitats, geographical features and sites of cultural significance. National parks also benefit local economies and the tourism industry in Canada.

(This is the full-length entry about National Parks of Canada. For a plain-language summary, please see National Parks of Canada (Plain-Language Summary).)