An overview of Canada's forest resources
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Description: An overview of Canada's forest resources
It includes multiple components including a map, graphs, pictographs and facts about Canada's forests and the disturbances that affect them.
Text on the infographic, as well as pie and bar chart and map data are as follows:
How much of Canada's area is forest?
3,470,690 km2 of Canada's total area of 9,979,685 km2 is forest. That's a larger area than Alberta, Ontario and Quebec combined.
Forest Area
- 35% of Canada's area is forest.
- 9% of the world's forests are in Canada.
The boreal zone
Canada's boreal zone spans 5.5 million km2 including all or part of 10 ecozones and accounts for over three-quarters of Canada's forest area.
Forest land percent by ecozone:
A thematic map indicates the forest land percentage by ecozone. Ecozone names and percentages are indicated directly on the map, with the ecozone colours ranging from pale cream to green: the darker the color the higher the percentage of forest land in that ecozone.
In the Atlantic Maritime ecozone, 83% of the ecozone area is forest land. In the Boreal Shield, the percentage is 80%, followed by the Montane Cordillera (66%), Taiga Plains (59%), Boreal Plains (57%), Pacific Maritime (53%), Taiga Shield (42%), Boreal Cordillera (42%), Hudson Plains (29%), Taiga Cordillera (24%), Mixedwood Plains (29%) and the Prairies (3%).
Arctic ecozones are not inventoried.
What do Canada's forests look like?
Forest types
Of Canada's forests, 68% are coniferous, 16% are mixedwood, 11% are broadleaf and 6% are non-treed.
Forest species
53% of forests are spruce, 11% are poplar and 10% are pine.
Age classes
42% of Canada's forests are between 81 and 120 years old, followed by 26% between 41 and 80 and 12% under 41.
What types of disturbances affect Canada's forests?
Insects
In 2015, insects damaged 176,318 km2 of forest.
Forest fires
In 2015, 7,140 wildfires burned a total of 38,616 km2 of forest.
Harvesting
In 2015, Canada harvested 7,796 km2 of forest.
Deforestations
From 1990 to 2015, forest area decreased 0.3% from 3.48 million km2 to 3.47 million km2.
Source: Human Activity and the Environment 2017: Forests in Canada
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