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Canada has seven primary vegetation regions, in addition to the marine fauna found along the country’s coasts. Each region is characterized by distinct plant communities. The plants in each region are mostly determined by climate. Other factors that determine which plants grow in which region include geology, soil composition and erosion, water drainage patterns and human interference.

This article is a plain-language summary of Vegetation Regions. If you are interested in reading about this topic in more depth, please see our full-length entry, Vegetation Regions.

Canada has seven primary vegetation regions, in addition to the marine fauna found along the country’s coasts. Vegetation regions are geographical areas characterized by distinct plant communities. Community composition, determined primarily by climate (e.g., temperature, precipitation and sunlight), may be affected by factors such as geology, soil composition and erosion, water drainage patterns and human interference. Each vegetation region supports a characteristic animal community that may also affect its composition.

This is a full-length entry about Vegetation Regions. For a plain-language summary, please see Vegetation Regions (Plain-Language Summary).

Lying north of mainland Canada, the Arctic Archipelago consists of 94 major islands (greater than 130 km2) and 36,469 minor islands covering a total of 1.4 million km2. Apart from Greenland, which is almost entirely ice covered, the Canadian Arctic Archipelago forms the world's largest High Arctic land area.

Main Forest TypesWorldwide there are 3 main forest types related directly to climatic zones: equatorial- and tropical-region forests, temperate-zone forests, and forests associated with colder climates.

The St. Lawrence River is a grand river and estuary, which together with the Great Lakes forms a hydrographic system that penetrates 3,058 km into North America. The river proper, about 1,197 km long, issues from Lake Ontario, flows northeast past Montreal and Quebec City to the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The route of early explorers and the main axis of New France, the St. Lawrence River figured prominently in Canada's early history, and it remains the focus of settlement for much of the province of Quebec. It is still the most important commercial waterway in Canada, as well as a source of electric power and natural beauty. (See also St Lawrence Lowland.)

The North Saskatchewan River (1,287 km long, the first 48.5 km of which is designated as a Canadian Heritage River) is a major tributary to the Saskatchewan River, which ultimately flows into Hudson Bay. The mean annual flow is 241 m3/s; however, flow varies between the peak in July and minimum in February. It served as a major transportation route from the end of the last Ice Age through the mid-20th century.

Hans Island, Nunavut, is a tiny (1.2 km²), unpopulated island south of the 81st parallel in the Kennedy Channel (the northern part of Nares Strait), almost equidistant between Ellesmere Island and Greenland. The Greenlandic word for the island is Tartupaluk. (Greenlandic is a language spoken by Greenland Inuit.) For decades, both Canada and Denmark claimed ownership of the island. On 14 June 2022, however, the two countries settled the dispute, dividing the island roughly equally between them. (See also Canadian Arctic Sovereignty.)

Port Refuge is a small bay on the south coast of Grinnell Peninsula, Devon I, in the high Arctic.