Related Research Articles
Canada has a vast geography that occupies much of the continent of North America, sharing a land border with the contiguous United States to the south and the U.S. state of Alaska to the northwest. Canada stretches from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west; to the north lies the Arctic Ocean. Greenland is to the northeast with a shared border on Hans Island. To the southeast Canada shares a maritime boundary with France's overseas collectivity of Saint Pierre and Miquelon, the last vestige of New France. By total area, Canada is the second-largest country in the world, after Russia. By land area alone, however, Canada ranks fourth, the difference being due to it having the world's largest proportion of fresh water lakes. Of Canada's thirteen provinces and territories, only two are landlocked while the other eleven all directly border one of three oceans.
Lake Agassiz was a large proglacial lake that existed in central North America during late Pleistocene, fed by meltwater from the retreating Laurentide Ice Sheet at the end of the last glacial period. At its peak, the lake's area was larger than all of the modern Great Lakes combined.
The Mackenzie River is a river in the Canadian boreal forest. It forms, along with the Slave, Peace, and Finlay, the longest river system in Canada, and includes the second largest drainage basin of any North American river after the Mississippi.
Lake Athabasca is in the north-west corner of Saskatchewan and the north-east corner of Alberta between 58° and 60° N in Canada. The lake is 26% in Alberta and 74% in Saskatchewan.
The Interior Plains is a vast physiographic region that spreads across the Laurentian craton of central North America, extending along the east flank of the Rocky Mountains from the Gulf Coast region to the Arctic Beaufort Sea. In Canada, it encompasses the Canadian Prairies separating the Canadian Rockies from the Canadian Shield, as well as the Boreal Plains and Taiga Plains east of the Mackenzie and Richardson Mountains; while in the United States, it includes the Great Plains of the West/Midwest and the tallgrass prairie region to the south of the Great Lakes extending east to the Appalachian Plateau region.
Great Slave Lake is the second-largest lake in the Northwest Territories of Canada, the deepest lake in North America at 614 m (2,014 ft), and the tenth-largest lake in the world by area. It is 469 km (291 mi) long and 20 to 203 km wide. It covers an area of 27,200 km2 (10,500 sq mi) in the southern part of the territory. Its given volume ranges from 1,070 km3 (260 cu mi) to 1,580 km3 (380 cu mi) and up to 2,088 km3 (501 cu mi) making it the 10th or 12th largest by volume.
The Beaufort Sea is a marginal sea of the Arctic Ocean, located north of the Northwest Territories, the Yukon, and Alaska, and west of Canada's Arctic islands. The sea is named after Sir Francis Beaufort, a hydrographer. The Mackenzie River, the longest in Canada, empties into the Canadian part of the Beaufort Sea west of Tuktoyaktuk, which is one of the few permanent settlements on the sea's shores.
Great Bear Lake is a lake in the boreal forest of Canada. It is the largest lake entirely in Canada, the fourth-largest in North America, and the eighth-largest in the world. The lake is in the Northwest Territories, on the Arctic Circle between 65 and 67 degrees of northern latitude and between 118 and 123 degrees western longitude, 156 m (512 ft) above sea level.
The Laurentide Ice Sheet was a massive sheet of ice that covered millions of square miles, including most of Canada and a large portion of the Northern United States, multiple times during the Quaternary glacial epochs, from 2.58 million years ago to the present.
The Clearwater River is located in the Canadian provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta. It rises in the northern forest region of north-western Saskatchewan and joins the Athabasca River in north-eastern Alberta. It was part of an important trade route during the fur trade era and has been designated as a Canadian Heritage River.
The Quaternary glaciation, also known as the Pleistocene glaciation, is an alternating series of glacial and interglacial periods during the Quaternary period that began 2.58 Ma and is ongoing. Although geologists describe this entire period up to the present as an "ice age", in popular culture this term usually refers to the most recent glacial period, or to the Pleistocene epoch in general. Since Earth still has polar ice sheets, geologists consider the Quaternary glaciation to be ongoing, though currently in an interglacial period.
The Traverse Gap is an ancient river channel occupied by Lake Traverse, Big Stone Lake and the valley connecting them at Browns Valley, Minnesota. It is located on the border of the U.S. states of Minnesota and South Dakota. Traverse Gap has an unusual distinction for a valley: it is crossed by a continental divide, and in some floods water has flowed across that divide from one drainage basin to the other. Before the Anglo-American Convention of 1818 it marked the border between British territory in the north and U.S. – or earlier, French – territory in the south.
The Mackenzie dike swarm, also called the Mackenzie dikes, forms a large igneous province in the western Canadian Shield of Canada. It is part of the larger Mackenzie Large Igneous Province and is one of more than three dozen dike swarms in various parts of the Canadian Shield.
The Thumb is a mountain located 7 km (4 mi) south of Sitchiada Mountain on the east side of Bear Lake, on the divide between the upper Omineca River and the basin of the Bear River in the Omineca Country of the Central-North Interior of British Columbia, Canada. As the Omineca is part of the Arctic Ocean drainage, via the Peace and Mackenzie Rivers, and the Bear is in the basin of the Skeena River, which drains to the Pacific, The Thumb is located on the Continental Divide.
Volcanism of Northern Canada has produced hundreds of volcanic areas and extensive lava formations across Northern Canada. The region's different volcano and lava types originate from different tectonic settings and types of volcanic eruptions, ranging from passive lava eruptions to violent explosive eruptions. Northern Canada has a record of very large volumes of magmatic rock called large igneous provinces. They are represented by deep-level plumbing systems consisting of giant dike swarms, sill provinces and layered intrusions.
The Mackenzie Large Igneous Province (MLIP) is a major Mesoproterozoic large igneous province of the southwestern, western and northwestern Canadian Shield in Canada. It consists of a group of related igneous rocks that were formed during a massive igneous event starting about 1,270 million years ago. The large igneous province extends from the Arctic in Nunavut to near the Great Lakes in Northwestern Ontario where it meets with the smaller Matachewan dike swarm. Included in the Mackenzie Large Igneous Province are the large Muskox layered intrusion, the Coppermine River flood basalt sequence and the massive northwesterly trending Mackenzie dike swarm.
The phenomenon of paleoflooding is apparent in the geologic record over various spatial and temporal scales. It often occurred on a large scale, and was the result of either glacial ice melt causing large outbursts of freshwater, or high sea levels breaching bodies of freshwater. If a freshwater outflow event was large enough that the water reached the ocean system, it caused changes in salinity that potentially affected ocean circulation and global climate. Freshwater flows could also accumulate to form continental glacial lakes, and this is another indicator of large-scale flooding. In contrast, periods of high global sea level could cause marine water to breach natural dams and flow into bodies of freshwater. Changes in salinity of freshwater and marine bodies can be detected from the analysis of organisms that inhabited those bodies at a given time, as certain organisms are more suited to live in either fresh or saline conditions.
The geology of the Northwest Territories has been mapped in different quadrangles by the Canadian government. The region has some of the oldest rocks in the world and among the oldest in North America, formed from several sections of stable craton continental crust, including the Slave Craton, Rae Craton and Hearne Craton. These rocks form the Archean and Proterozoic Precambrian basement rock of the region and are the subject of extensive research to understand continental crust and tectonic conditions on the early Earth.
The Goldthwait Sea was a sea that emerged during the last deglaciation, starting around 13,000 years ago, covering what is now the Gulf of Saint Lawrence and surrounding areas. At that time, the land had been depressed under the weight of the Laurentide Ice Sheet, which was up to 2 kilometres (1.2 mi) thick. Areas on the Anticosti Island and low-lying regions of Quebec and the Maritimes bordering the Saint Lawrence were below sea level. As the land rebounded over the next 3,000 years, despite rising sea levels the sea retreated to roughly the present boundaries of the Gulf.
References
- 1 2 Smith, Derald G. (1994). "Glacial lake McConnell: Paleogeography, age, duration, and associated river deltas, mackenzie river basin, western Canada". Quaternary Science Reviews. 13 (9–10): 829–843. Bibcode:1994QSRv...13..829S. doi:10.1016/0277-3791(94)90004-3.
- 1 2 3 4 Pielou, E. C. (1992). After the Ice Age: The Return of Life to Glaciated North America. University of Chicago Press. p. 193. ISBN 0226668126 . Retrieved September 23, 2012.
- ↑ Bednarski, J. M. "Quaternary geology of northeastern Alberta". National Resources Canada. Retrieved September 23, 2012.
- ↑ Kerr, D. E.; Wilson, P. (2000). "Preliminary surficial geology studies and mineral exploration considerations in the Yellowknife area, Northwest Territories" (PDF). Geological Survey of Canada . Retrieved September 23, 2012.
- ↑ Padbury, G. A.; Acton, D. F.; Sturshnoff, Colette T. (1998). Ecoregions of Saskatchewan. CPRC Press. p. 54. ISBN 0889770972 . Retrieved September 23, 2012.
