The Muskwa-Slave Lake taiga spans northern Alberta, northeastern British Columbia, the southwestern Northwest Territories, and southeastern Yukon, taking in roughly half of Great Slave Lake. Its forests are relatively tall, closed stands of quaking aspen, white spruce, and balsam fir, while peatlands of black spruce with birch and assorted shrubs cover 20-50 percent of the landscape over discontinuous permafrost. The climate is mid-to-high boreal: winters average roughly -24.5 to -18 degrees C, summers about 12.5 degrees C, with 250-500 mm of annual precipitation, and lightning-driven fire sustains a shifting mosaic of post-fire stages. Wood Buffalo National Park here protects the world's largest wood bison herd, the only natural breeding population of the endangered whooping crane, and the vast Peace-Athabasca Delta.

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