The Northern Canadian Shield taiga is a vast subarctic ecoregion stretching across northern Canada from Great Bear Lake in the Northwest Territories through northern Saskatchewan, Alberta, and Manitoba to southern Nunavut. It is an open transition zone of sparse, stunted black spruce and tamarack, with white spruce on better-drained sites, over Precambrian Shield bedrock marked by eskers and countless lakes, with dwarf birch, lichens, and mosses below. The climate is extreme subarctic (Koppen Dfc), with mean annual temperatures near -8 to -5 C, modest 200-400 mm precipitation, and discontinuous to continuous permafrost. The region contains nearly a quarter of North America's tree line and remains largely intact, though caribou herds have declined sharply and only a small fraction is protected.

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