Canada's Forest Inventory 2001 - Publications du gouvernement du ...

4.3 Boreal Region
The previous two sections indicate the magnitude of forests in the boreal region in Canada. Their importance
is also highlighted in the following:
• The theme of the 2005 National Forest Week was “The Boreal Forest: A Global Legacy”
(Natural Resources Canada);
• The State of Canada’s Forests 2004-2005 (CFS 2005) report focuses on the boreal region.
Figure 48 shows the extent of Canada’s boreal region. The boundaries of this region have been
defined based on terrestrial ecozones, ecoregions and, in some cases, ecodistricts, which are subdivisions
of an ecoregion. These boundaries have been applied to the CanFI2001 summary units, and the results are
retained in the database, thereby allowing analyses of data within the boreal region to be performed.
Table 19 lists the terrestrial ecozones that make up Canada’s boreal region, as well as area and
percentage of each ecozone within the region.
Table 20 lists area in thousands of hectares for each of the nonvegetated land classes; Table
21 lists area, volume and biomass for each of the vegetated land classes. The boreal region spans
544.6 million ha.; of this, about 310 million ha are forest and other wooded land. Figure 49 compares the
area percentage of grouped land classes in Canada to those in Canada’s boreal region: the boreal region
has a higher proportion of forest and of other wooded land than occurs in Canada as a whole; Canada has
proportionately more agricultural land, naturally vegetated non-treed land, and naturally nonvegetated
land than does the boreal region. The boreal region also has a greater proportion of fresh water than exists
in all of Canada.
Table 22 and Figure 50 compare the total volume by forest type in Canada to that in the boreal region:
the boreal region contains more than half of the total volume of Canada, with most volume occurring
in softwood forest types. Canada as a whole has a much higher proportion of volume occurring in the
softwood forest types than the boreal region does, due to the large volume that occurs in softwood forest
types in British Columbia outside the boreal region—particularly along the coast.
Figure 51 compares the volume percent by grouped leading species in the boreal region to that in
Canada. In general, the proportions are similar, with volume percent for other conifers being slightly
higher in the boreal region, and spruces, pines, and firs contributing slightly higher percents of total
volume in Canada than they do in the boreal region.
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