Maps

Canada's Boreal

The two maps below depict the boreal forest and the boreal region of Canada. The boreal forest is the 310 million hectares of forest that lie within the 545 million hectares of boreal region. The Canadian portion of the boreal forest starts in the Yukon and northeastern British Columbia, and stretches across the northern parts of the Prairie provinces, Quebec and Ontario, to Labrador and Newfoundland.

Canada's land area is divided into 15 ecozones that represent large ecosystem units and have characteristic landforms and climate. Eleven of these ecozones are in forest areas; the boreal forest extends across a portion of eight of them.

Four of the eight are the Taiga Cordillera, Taiga Plains, Taiga Shield and Hudson Plains which, together, form the northern tier of the forest. Three other ecozones form the southern tier of “closed”—more or less continuous—boreal forest. These are the Boreal Cordillera in the western mountains, the Boreal Plains in the prairies, and the Boreal Shield from Alberta to Newfoundland. The eighth ecozone is the Atlantic Maritime, which represents a small portion of Canada's boreal forest in the Cape Breton Highlands of Nova Scotia and Quebec's Îles-de-la-Madeleine.

(For additional information on ecological boundaries, see the National Ecological Framework of Canada at http://sis.agr.gc.ca/cansis/nsdb/ecostrat/index.html.)

Canada's Boreal Forest This map is also available in PDF format.

Canada's Boreal Region This map is also available in PDF format.

Communities Dependent on Canada's Boreal Region

This map depicts the communities, displayed as red points, within Statistics Canada Census subdivisions whose economy is partially dependent on Canada's boreal region. Only Elections Canada Federal Electoral Districts intersecting the boreal region are shown. The Federal Electoral District numbers correspond to those listed in the table.

There are 230 Census subdivisions inside the boreal region whose dependence on forestry represents at least 20 percent of its total economy (2001). Within these Census subdivisions, there are approximately 522 forestry-dependent communities. The influence of the boreal, however, is larger than this, since there are additional forestry-dependent communities that are geographically within the proximity, but located outside of the boreal region boundary.

Communities dependent on Canada's boreal region This map is also available in PDF format.

Forest-dependent Census subdivisions in Canada's boreal region This document is also available in PDF format.