The Eastern Canadian Shield taiga is a vast boreal ecoregion stretching from Hudson and James Bays to the Labrador Sea, with roughly two-thirds in Quebec and one-third in Newfoundland and Labrador. Its rugged landscape of plateaus, peatlands, and deeply incised coastal fjords supports open, stunted woodlands dominated by black spruce and tamarack. The climate is cold, with mean annual temperatures ranging from about -6°C to 1°C and annual precipitation from roughly 300–400 mm near Ungava Bay to 1,000 mm in the southeast. Only about 5% of the ecoregion is protected, and just 25% of the habitat outside protected areas remains intact. It holds most of the year-round range of the George River barren-ground caribou herd, once the world's largest migratory herd but reduced by some 99% to under 9,000 animals by 2016.

At a glance

About the boreal forests/taiga biome

The vast northern forest belt of spruce, fir, pine, and larch, defined by long, severe winters and short growing seasons. Often underlain by permafrost and wetlands, the taiga forms one of the world’s largest terrestrial carbon stores.

National refinement sub-regions

Catalog plants suited to this ecoregion

Computed from each plant's stated USDA zone range against this ecoregion's NRCan Plant Hardiness Zone 1981-2010 GeoTIFF published current zone range, with the CHELSA mid-century warming delta applied for the projection. Plants whose stated range falls outside both the current and projected zone end up dropped; the rest land in one of the three buckets below.

Collections for this ecoregion

Curated multi-plant collections whose members all fit this ecoregion's zone range — no won't-grow members smuggled in. Overall fit class shown per collection is the weakest link across its members.

Related ecoregions