Below the Hudson Bay Lowlands is Ontario’s boreal forest, the largest forest region in Ontario and Canada. With an area of 50 million hectares, the boreal forest is Ontario’s largest forest region and contains two thirds of Ontario’s forest. It extends from the northern limits of the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence forest to the Hudson Bay Lowlands. Here the main conifer species are black and white spruce, jack pine, balsam fir, tamarack and eastern white cedar; the predominant deciduous species are poplars and white birch. These forests are very similar to those in northern Minnesota and parts of upper Michigan.
Globally, the boreal forest accounts for about 25 percent of the world’s closed canopy forests. In geological terms, the boreal forest is quite new. Until about 13,000 years ago, glaciers covered much of Canada. It wasn’t until about 5,000 years ago that the boreal forest became firmly established in northern Canada. The boreal forest contains 58 percent of Ontario's forests.
The terrain of the boreal forest ranges from lowland peat bogs to deep fertile upland soils to bedrock covered by thin layers of soil and moss.
Boreal forests are characterized by natural disturbance, and are heavily influenced by the size, intensity and frequency of fires that have burned across the landscape. In recent years wildfires have impacted hundreds of thousands of hectares annually. Weather also affects forest conditions by blowing down large swath of trees, or by causing snow and ice damage. Forest insects such as spruce budworm or forest tent caterpillar can also defoliate immense areas of forest. Most tree species in the boreal forest naturally regenerate new young forests after forest fires, floods, wind storms and insect damage. These natural forces often destroy all the trees in a large area and leave behind complex patches of various sizes. This creates conditions favourable to tree seedling establishment and growth, thus creating the natural pattern of even-aged, single species forests.
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- The boreal forest is home to a wide variety of wildlife which include predators such as black bears, wolves and lynx; large ungulates like moose and caribou; a myriad of birds ranging from the great owl to the tiny winter wren
- This region has many small mammals such as the pine marten, varying hare, red fox and porcupine.
- In addition, the forest contains hundreds of species of plants, such as ferns, mosses, fungi, shrubs and herbs.
View of the Boreal Forest
