Geography of Canada
has a vast geography that occupies much of the continent of North America, sharing a land border with the contiguous United States to the south and the US state of Alaska to the northwest. Canada stretches from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west; to the north lies the Arctic Ocean. Greenland is to the northeast with a shared border on Hans Island. To the southeast Canada shares a maritime boundary with France's overseas collectivity of Saint Pierre and Miquelon, the last vestige of New France. By total area, Canada is the second-largest country in the world, after Russia. By land area alone, however, Canada ranks fourth, the difference being due to it having the world's largest proportion of fresh water lakes. Of Canada's thirteen provinces and territories, only two are landlocked while the other eleven all directly border one of three oceans.
Canada is home to the world's northernmost settlement, Canadian Forces Station Alert, on the northern tip of Ellesmere Island—latitude 82.5°N—which lies from the North Pole. Much of the Canadian Arctic is covered by ice and permafrost. Canada has the longest coastline in the world, with a total length of ; additionally, its border with the United States is the world's longest land border, stretching. Three of Canada's Arctic islands, Baffin Island, Victoria Island and Ellesmere Island, are among the ten largest in the world.
Canada can be divided into seven physiographic regions: the Canadian Shield, the Interior Plains, the Great Lakes–St. Lawrence Lowlands, the Appalachian region, the Western Cordillera, Hudson Bay Lowlands and the Arctic Archipelago. Canada is also divided into fifteen terrestrial and five marine ecozones, encompassing over 80,000 classified species of life. Since the end of the last glacial period, Canada has consisted of eight distinct forest regions, including extensive boreal forest on the Canadian Shield; 42 per cent of the land acreage of Canada is covered by forests, made up mostly of spruce, poplar and pine. Canada has over 2,000,000 lakes—563 greater than —which is more than any other country, containing much of the world's fresh water. There are also freshwater glaciers in the Canadian Rockies, the Coast Mountains and the Arctic Cordillera. A recent global remote sensing analysis also suggested that there were 6,477 km2 of tidal flats in Canada, making it the 5th ranked country in terms of how much tidal flat occurs there. Protected areas of Canada and National Wildlife Areas have been established to preserve ecosystems.
Canada is geologically active, having many earthquakes and potentially active volcanoes, notably the Mount Meager massif, Mount Garibaldi, Mount Cayley, and the Mount Edziza volcanic complex. Average winter and summer high temperatures across Canada range from Arctic weather in the north, to hot summers in the southern regions, with four distinct seasons.
Physiography
Canada covers and a panoply of various geoclimatic regions, of which there are seven main regions. Canada also encompasses vast maritime terrain, with the world's longest coastline of. The physical geography of Canada is widely varied. Boreal forests prevail throughout the country, ice is prominent in northerly Arctic regions and through the Canadian Rocky Mountains, and the relatively flat Canadian Prairies in the southwest facilitate productive agriculture. The Great Lakes feed the St. Lawrence River where lowlands host much of Canada's population.The National Topographic System is used by Natural Resources Canada for providing general purpose topographic maps of the country. The maps provide details on landforms and terrain, lakes and rivers, forested areas, administrative zones, populated areas, roads and railways, as well as other man-made features. These maps are used by all levels of government and industry for forest fire and flood control, depiction of crop areas, right-of-way, real estate planning, development of natural resources and highway planning.
Appalachian Mountains
The Appalachian mountain range extends from Alabama in southern United States through the Gaspé Peninsula and the Atlantic Provinces, creating rolling hills indented by river valleys. It also runs through parts of southern Quebec.The Appalachian Mountains are an old and eroded range of mountains, approximately 380 million years in age. Notable mountains in the Appalachians include Mount Jacques-Cartier, Mount Carleton, The Cabox. Parts of the Appalachians are home to a rich endemic flora and fauna and are considered to have been nunataks during the last glaciation era.
Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Lowlands
Canadian Shield
The northeastern part of Alberta, northern parts of Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec, all of Labrador and the Great Northern Peninsula of Newfoundland, eastern mainland Northwest Territories, most of Nunavut's mainland and, of its Arctic Archipelago, Baffin Island and significant bands through Somerset, Southampton, Devon and Ellesmere islands are located on a vast rock base known as the Canadian Shield. The Shield mostly consists of eroded hilly terrain and contains many lakes and important rivers used for hydroelectric production, particularly in northern Quebec and Ontario. The Shield also encloses an area of wetlands around the Hudson Bay. Some particular regions of the Shield are referred to as mountain ranges, including the Torngat and Laurentian Mountains.The Shield cannot support intensive agriculture, although there is subsistence agriculture and small dairy farms in many of the river valleys and around the abundant lakes, particularly in the southern regions. Boreal forest covers much of the shield, with a mix of conifers that provide valuable timber resources in areas such as the Central Canadian Shield forests ecoregion that covers much of Northern Ontario.
The Canadian Shield is known for its vast mineral reserves such as emeralds, diamonds and copper, and is there also called the "mineral house".
Canadian Interior Plains
Canadian Arctic
While the largest part of the Canadian Arctic is composed of seemingly endless permafrost and tundra north of the tree line, it encompasses geological regions of varying types: the Arctic Cordillera contains the northernmost mountain system in the world. The Arctic Lowlands and Hudson Bay lowlands comprise a substantial part of the geographic region often designated as the Canadian Shield. The ground in the Arctic is mostly composed of permafrost, making construction difficult and often hazardous, and agriculture virtually impossible.The Arctic, when defined as everything north of the tree line, covers most of Nunavut and the northernmost parts of Northwest Territories, Yukon, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec and Labrador. The archipelago consists of 36,563 islands, of which 94 are classified as major islands, being larger than, and cover a total area of.
Western Cordillera
The Coast Mountains in British Columbia run from the lower Fraser River and the Fraser Canyon northwestward, separating the Interior Plateau from the Pacific Ocean. Its southeastern end is separated from the North Cascades by the Fraser Lowland, where nearly a third of Western Canada's population reside.The coastal flank of the Coast Mountains is characterized by an intense network of fjords and associated islands, very similar to the Norwegian coastline in Northern Europe; while their inland side transitions to the high plateau with dryland valleys notable for a series of large alpine lakes similar to those in southern Switzerland, beginning in deep mountains and ending in flatland. They are subdivided in three main groups, the Pacific Ranges between the Fraser River and Bella Coola, the Kitimat Ranges from there northwards to the Nass River, and the Boundary Ranges from there to the mountain terminus in Yukon at Champagne Pass and Chilkat Pass northwest of Haines, Alaska. The Saint Elias Mountains lie to their west and northwest, while the Yukon Ranges and Yukon Basin lie to their north. On the inland side of the Boundary Ranges are the Tahltan and Tagish Highlands and also the Skeena Mountains, part of the Interior Mountains system, which also extend southwards on the inland side of the Kitimat Ranges.
The terrain of the main spine of the Coast Mountains is typified by heavy glaciation, including several very large icefields of varying elevation. Of the three subdivisions, the Pacific Ranges are the highest and are crowned by Mount Waddington, while the Boundary Ranges contain the largest icefields, the Juneau Icefield being the largest. The Kitimat Ranges are lower and less glacier-covered than either of the other two groupings, but are extremely rugged and dense.
The Coast Mountains are made of igneous and metamorphic rock from an episode of arc volcanism related to subduction of the Kula and Farallon Plates during the Laramide orogeny about 100 million years ago. The widespread granite forming the Coast Mountains formed when magma intruded and cooled at depth beneath volcanoes of the Coast Range Arc whereas the metamorphic formed when intruding magma heated the surrounding rock to produce schist.
The Insular Mountains extend from Vancouver Island in the south to the Haida Gwaii in the north on the British Columbia Coast. It contains two main mountain ranges, the Vancouver Island Ranges on Vancouver Island and the Queen Charlotte Mountains on Haida Gwaii.
Hudson Bay Lowlands
Extreme points
The northernmost point of land within the boundaries of Canada is Cape Columbia, Ellesmere Island, Nunavut. The northernmost point of the Canadian mainland is Zenith Point on Boothia Peninsula, Nunavut. The southernmost point is Middle Island, in Lake Erie, Ontario ; the southernmost water point lies just south of the island, on the Ontario–Ohio border. The southernmost point of the Canadian mainland is Point Pelee, Ontario. The lowest point is sea level at 0 m, whilst the highest point is Mount Logan, Yukon, at 5,959 m / 19,550 ft.The westernmost point is Boundary Peak 187 at the southern end of the Yukon–Alaska border, which roughly follows 141°W but leans very slightly east as it goes North. The easternmost point is Cape Spear, Newfoundland . The easternmost point of the Canadian mainland is Elijah Point, Cape St. Charles, Labrador .
The Canadian pole of inaccessibility is allegedly near Jackfish River, Alberta. The furthest straight-line distance that can be travelled to Canadian points of land is between the southwest tip of Kluane National Park and Reserve and Cripple Cove, Newfoundland at a distance of.