Texas Gardening: it is raining again. it's june and it's texas. why??????, 1 by Lilypon

Lilypon wrote:
Regarding your friend's mention of a forest.......she is speaking of Canada's Boreal Forest. It draps Canada from sea to sea and in my province it covers 1/2 of it. It also goes right up into the Northwest Territories and Nunavut. I lived, for six months, in Inuvik (right up by the Arctic Ocean) and it is at the Northern end of the Boreal forest's line.

Here's a description of that forest and it will be a horrible loss to North America if it suffers a severe die back:

"Draped like a green scarf across the shoulders of North America, the boreal or "northern" forest is Canada's largest biome or environmental community. It occupies 35% of the total Canadian land area and 77% of Canada's total forest land, stretching between northern tundra and southern grassland and mixed hardwood trees. The boreal forest's animals, plants and products affect each Canadian every day, from paper products, to the jack pine railway ties, through to the air we breathe. This northern forest, named after Boreas, the Greek god of the North Wind, is an inevitable and unavoidable part of who we are.


Starting in the Yukon Territory, the boreal forest forms a band almost 1000 kilometres wide sweeping southeast to Newfoundland and Labrador. To its north is the treeline and beyond that the tundra of the arctic. To its south, the boreal forest is bordered by the subalpine and montane forests of British Columbia, the grasslands of the Prairie Provinces, and the Great Lakes - St. Lawrence forests of Ontario and Quebec.

The boreal forest is an integral part of our economy, history, culture and natural environment. It gives birth to new life through its diverse ecosystems and helps to sustain our lives through the renewal of the air above and soil below. This vast body of land provides the lakes, streams and rivers that act as the veins and arteries of so much of our country. It is also an important source of forest products, and, thereby, a significant part of the economic base of Canada.

"Insect infestation

Insect infestation is a significant disturbance in the eastern and central regions of Canada where outbreaks of spruce budworm cause extensive damage to commercially valuable stands of fir and spruce. Between 1980 and 1993 over 6.6 million hectares of forest land in the eastern boreal forest was affected by the spruce budworm. Had it not been for extensive aerial spraying the affected area would have been much more extensive."
http://atlas.nrcan.gc.ca/site/english/learningresources/them...

The pine beetle has decimated huge tracks of forest in British Columbia and, with our warmer winters, has moved into Alberta and Saskatchewan.

The red is dead pines (also a major tree in our boreal forest).





This message was edited Jun 5, 2009 12:38 PM