Boreal forest of Canada
Canada's boreal forest is a vast region comprising about one third of the circumpolar
The boreal forest zone consists of closed-crown
The boreal region contains about 13% of Canada's population. With its sheer vastness and forest cover, the boreal makes an important contribution to the rural and aboriginal economies of Canada, primarily through resource industries, recreation, hunting, fishing and eco-tourism. Hundreds of cities and towns within its territory derive at least 20% of their economic activity from the forest, mainly from industries like forest products, mining, oil and gas and tourism.[6] The boreal forest also plays an iconic role in Canada's history, economic and social development and the arts.[7]
Overview
Location and size
The Canadian boreal forest is a very large bio-region that extends in length from the Yukon-Alaska border right across the country to Newfoundland and Labrador. It is over 1,000 kilometres (620 mi) in width (north to south) separating the arctic
Canada's boreal forest is considered to be the largest intact forest on Earth, with around three million square kilometres still undisturbed by roads, cities and industrial development.[9] Its high level of intactness has made the forest a particular focus of environmentalists and conservation scientists who view the untouched regions of the forest as an opportunity for large-scale conservation that would otherwise be impractical in other parts of the world.
General forest ecology
The Canadian boreal forest in its current form began to emerge with the end of the last Ice Age. With the retreat of the
One dominant characteristic of the boreal is that much of it consists of large, even-aged stands, a uniformity that owes to a cycle of natural disturbances like forest fires, or outbreaks of
Terms like old growth and ancient forest have a different connotation in the boreal context than they do when used to describe mature coastal rain forests with longer-lived species and different natural disturbance cycles. However, the effects of forest fires and insect outbreaks differ from the effects of logging, so they should not be treated as equivalent in their ecological consequences. Logging, for example, requires road networks with their negative impacts,[17] and it removes nutrients from the site, which may deplete nutrients for the next cycle of forest growth.[11] Fire, on the other hand, recycles nutrients on location (except for some nitrogen), it removes accumulated organic matter and it stimulates reproduction of fire-dependent species.[18][19]
Ecosystems
Canada's boreal region can be divided into seven ecozones.[20] These seven can be divided into two main groups. The northern regions of the boreal forest consists of four eco-zones – Taiga Cordillera, Taiga Plains, Taiga Shield and Hudson Plains – that are the most thinly treed areas where the growing season and average tree size progressively shrinks until the edge of the Arctic tundra is reached.[21] The southern tier of the boreal meanwhile consists of three other ecozones that form the largely uninterrupted or continuous forest in stretching as far south as Lake Superior in Ontario (as the Central Canadian Shield forests ecoregion) and the Manitoba-North Dakota border. These three southern zones are the Boreal Shield, at 1,630,000 square kilometres the largest of the eight zones, the Boreal Plains and Boreal Cordillera.[22] A typical ecoregion of this southern tier would be the Eastern Canadian Shield taiga that covers northern Quebec and most of Labrador. Within the boreal region, there are about 1,890,000 square kilometres that are 80% to 100% forested and another 650,000 square kilometres with 60% to 80% forest cover.[23]
Forest species
Most trees native to the Canadian boreal are
Although there are rather few species of trees in the boreal forest, there is a considerable diversity of other kinds of plants. An accurate summary is difficult, since most compendia on plants are organized by political, rather than ecological boundaries; one exception addresses the flora of the
Inland water and wetlands
Canada's boreal landscape contains more lakes and rivers than any comparably sized landmass on Earth. It has been estimated that the boreal region contains over 1.5 million lakes with a minimum surface area of 40,000 m2 (430,000 sq ft) as well as some of Canada's largest lakes. Soft water lakes predominate in central and eastern Canada and hard water lakes predominate in Western Canada. Most large boreal lakes have cold water species of fish like trout and whitefish, while in warmer waters, species may include northern pike, walleye, and smallmouth bass.[30]
The boreal forest also has vast areas of
Deforestation
In contemporary times, the boreal forest has suffered little deforestation, defined as the permanent conversion of forest area to non-forest due to activities associated with agriculture, urban or recreational development, oil and gas development, and flooding for hydroelectric projects. In Alberta, the province with the largest oil and gas industry, more trees are cut for agriculture or oil and gas exploration than for timber.[34] In Eastern Canada, over 9,000 km2 (3,500 sq mi) of peatlands and forest have been flooded over the past four decades for hydroelectric projects. As of 2005[update], Canada as a whole has 91% of the boreal forest cover that existed at the dawn of European settlement.[35] More deforestation has occurred outside the boreal region, in more southerly areas of the country.[34] The forest sector annually harvests approximately ½ of 1% of the region. However, this is not considered deforestation by some, given that provincial laws are meant to ensure that areas harvested by the forest sector are replanted or regenerated naturally.[34] However, the resulting road network from logging has effects that persist long beyond the period of harvest; indeed, one can make the case that road construction is one of the most harmful and persistent effects of logging.[17]
Wildlife
There may be as many as five billion landbirds, including resident and migratory species. The Canadian boreal region contains the largest area of wetlands of any ecosystem of the world, serving as breeding ground for over 12 million waterbirds and millions of land birds, the latter including species as diverse as vultures, hawks, grouse, owls, hummingbirds, kingfishers, woodpeckers, and passerines (or perching birds, often referred to as songbirds).[36] It is estimated that the avian population of the boreal represents 60% of the landbirds in all of Canada and almost 30% of all landbirds in the United States and Canada combined.[37]
Many of the wildlife species, are, like the forests, dependent upon natural disturbance from fire and insect outbreaks. For example, at least three species of warbler (Cape May warbler, bay-breasted warbler and Tennessee warbler), have distributions and abundance related to spruce budworm outbreaks.
Few species of boreal wildlife are classified under government conservation regimes as being at risk of extinction. However, the decline of some major species of wildlife is a concern. Boreal woodland caribou, whose lichen-rich, mature forest habitat spans the boreal forest from the Northwest Territories to Labrador, is designated as a threatened by the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada.[40][41] The Newfoundland population of marten is threatened by habitat loss, accidental trapping and prey availability.[42]
Boreal life cycles
Carbon Cycling
The boreal forests keeps large amounts of carbons in biomass, dead organic matter, and soil pools. [43] Due to cold temperatures, significant amounts of carbon stocks have been built up, this combined with the further increasing temperatures and disturbance rates will lead to the high net source of carbon that will remain for more than a hundred years. This will result in global impacts which researchers are still uncertain about.[44] Direct effects of herbivores can lead to boreal landscapes as there may be decreased regeneration in some local forest patches. This is altering the input of soils, which could affect soil compaction, and density, or reduce microbial and nitrogen levels in the soil. At high abundance, large herbivores often choose palatable, fast-growing plants which keep keystone species in boreal forests juvenile, which changes these forests. This moose-led transition in forest age class distribution and composition causes slower increases in net primary production with lower large herbivore populations. This means that they are not only changing boreal forests from carbon sinks to sources over moderate periods.[45] Wildfires have impacts on the forest carbon balance as well, including the combustion emissions and the after effects. [46]
Natural regeneration
The particular mixture of tree species depends upon factors including soil moisture, soil depth, and organic content. Upland forests can be closely mixed with forested peatlands. The resulting conifer forests are produced by and dependent upon recurring disturbance from storms, fires, floods and insect outbreaks. Owing to the accumulated peat in the soil, and the predominance of coniferous trees, lightning-caused fire has always been a natural part of this forest. It is one of many ecosystems that depend upon such recurring natural disturbance.
Boreal vegetation never attains stability because of interactions among
Fire effects
Despite today's sophisticated and expensive fire-spotting and fire-fighting techniques, forest fires in Canada still burn, on average, about 28,000 km2 (11,000 sq mi) of boreal and other forest area annually. That average annual burn area is equivalent to more than three times the current annual industrial timber harvest. It can be many more times that in intense fire years.
Economic activities
Region-wide planning
Because parts of the boreal forest region are found in nearly every province and territory in Canada, there has not been much in the way of coordinated planning to develop the region. Prime Minister Diefenbaker talked of his "northern vision"[55] but little was done to see it come to pass. A proposal was authored by Richard Rohmer in 1967 called Mid-Canada Development Corridor: A Concept and was discussed by officials and politicians but was never implemented. In 2014, John van Nostrand attempted to revive the concept.[56]
In the absence of a nationwide plan, private industry and the provinces have pursued development in particular products or certain regions. These include the
Land ownership
Forest land in Canada is largely Crown land. Over 90% of the boreal forest is provincial Crown land; another 5% is federally controlled and includes national parks, First Nations reserves and national defence installations.[57]
Industrial activity
About 1,400 communities within the Boreal region rely on resource industries for at least part of the livelihood and stability. Many of these communities were carved out of the forest to support a sawmill, pulp and paper mill, mine or railway maintenance facility. Boreal forestry activities support almost 400,000 direct and indirect jobs across Canada. Forestry, pulp and paper, mining, and oil and gas exploration and development are the largest industries along with tourism, trapping, recreation, light manufacturing and the services to support industry and communities. The forest products sector is one of Canada's largest export industries, representing approximately 3% of GDP, with about half of the annual wood harvest coming from the boreal forest.[58]
Roughly one quarter of the boreal forest is managed for industrial forestry. The remaining three-quarters is either in parks, conservation areas, model forests or is considered non-timber-productive, generally defined as unsuitable for managed forestry or inaccessible. As recently as 2003, it was estimated that the annual harvest in the boreal was about 7,500 square kilometres per year, equivalent to about 0.2% of the total Canadian boreal forest.[59] The sharp downturn in the market for lumber because of the collapse of the housing market in the United States that began in 2006, coupled with import tariff and tax barriers, have knocked the bottom out of Canada's forest industry. In Ontario, Canada's most populous province, where most forestry activity is in the boreal, government statistics suggest that the harvest declined 18% from 2005 to 2006.[60] Given the high number of mill closings from 2005 onward, mostly in Ontario and Quebec, it is a trend that most likely persisted through 2007 and 2008.[61] Most of Canada's conventional onshore oil and gas production, including the rapidly expanding oil sands production in Alberta, is located in the boreal region as is Canada's largest uranium producing zone in northern Saskatchewan and Quebec's largest hydroelectric generating facilities in the La Grande watershed.
Indigenous participation
About eighty percent of the Indigenous population of Canada resides[when?] in forested areas – including one million in over five hundred First Nations and Métis settlements in boreal zones. Of that amount, over 17,000 work in the forest products industry, mostly in silviculture and woodlands operations in the boreal and other forest regions.[62]
Sustainable development
Since the early 1990s, a strong impetus has been created to focus on conserving Canada's boreal legacy and sustainably managing economic activity within the entire region. The Canadian boreal is largely intact and available for multiple uses like timber harvest, recreation and hunting. Forestry companies have come to adopt the management practices known as eco-system based management, which takes into consideration criteria and indicators for sustainability – social, economic and environmental. A number of key principles have come to underpin Canadian forestry practices as mandated by forestry legislation, including the obligation for forestry companies operating on public lands to fully regenerate all areas harvested for timber and to consult the public on the preparation of forest management/harvest plans submitted to the relevant provincial authorities.
Certification for sustainable forest management
As a result of growing public concern with sustainable development and conserving the integrity of the boreal forests, conservation initiatives are progressing on various fronts. The area in national and provincial parks and protected conservation areas is approximately 10% of the total boreal area.[63] Most large forest products companies have certified their boreal forestry operations to one of three third-party, independently audited standards for sustainable forest management:
- The Forest Stewardship Council's FSC Boreal Standard;
- The Canadian standard CAN/CSA Z809;
- The Sustainable Forestry Initiative.[64]
Sustainable Forest Management refers to managing a forest ecosystem in a manner that maintains and enhances its long-term health.
Protection
In July 2008 the Ontario government announced plans to protect 225,000 km2 (87,000 sq mi) of the Northern Boreal lands.
Boreal in culture and popular imagination
The boreal forest is deeply ingrained in the Canadian identity and the images foreigners have of Canada. The history of the early European fur traders, their adventures, discoveries, aboriginal alliances and misfortunes is an essential part of the popular colonial history of Canada. The canoe, the beaver pelt, the coureur des bois, the voyageurs, the Hudson's Bay Company and the North-West Mounted Police, the construction of Canada's transcontinental railways – all are symbols of Canadian history familiar to school children that are inextricably linked to the boreal forest.
The forest – and boreal species such as the caribou and loon – are or have been featured on Canadian currency. Another iconic and enduring image of the boreal was created by 20th-century landscape painters, most notably from the Group of Seven, who saw the uniqueness of Canada in its boreal vastness. The Group of Seven artists largely portrayed the boreal as natural, pure and unspoiled by human presence or activity and hence only partly a reflection of reality.[69]
See also
References
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- ISBN 978-0-662-46538-6, p. 21; Canadian Boreal Initiative, Borealcanada.ca/boreal-did-you-know-e.php; "Aboriginal Issues in Canada's Boreal Forest", Summary, National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy.
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- ^ Braun, David (February 7, 2010). "Boreal landscapes added to Canada's parks Boreal landscapes added to Canada's parks". NatGeo News Watch: News Editor David Braun's Eye on the World. National Geographic Society. Archived from the original on February 15, 2010. Retrieved 17 February 2010.
- ^ Pew Environment Group. A Forest of Blue: Canada's Boreal Forest. March 16, 2011
- ^ Munro, Margaret (March 16, 2011). "Canada urged to protect water in boreal forests". The Vancouver Sun. Retrieved 16 March 2011.
- ^ "The boreal muse of the Group of Seven; Creating a national identity from a palette of boreal colours", Canadian Geographic, Jan/Feb 2004, "The Boreal Muse of the Group of Seven - Canadian Geographic Magazine". Archived from the original on 2008-02-21. Retrieved 2008-05-27.
Citations
- Culling, Diane E.; Culling, Brad A. (May 2006), Ecology and seasonal habitat selection of boreal caribou in the Snake-Sahtaneh watershed, British Columbia: 2000 to 2004 (PDF), Fort St. John, British Columbia, archived from the original (PDF) on 21 December 2013, retrieved 19 December 2013
{{citation}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - "State of Canada's Forests 1999–2000: Forests in the New Millennium" (PDF), Natural Resources Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, 2000, ISBN 0-662-29069-0, retrieved 19 December 2013
External links
Media related to Boreal forest of Canada at Wikimedia Commons
- Map of Canadian Ecozones
- The Alberta Centre for Boreal Studies
- Boreal Songbird Initiative
- International Boreal Conservation Campaign
- Map of world's largest wetlands.
- McMahon, Kevin (writer, director) (2020). Borealis (Motion picture). Canada: National Film Board of Canada.