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Old Crow Basin is an important geographic feature in the natural history and human history of Canada

The Fraser River is the longest river in British Columbia, stretching 1,375 km. It begins on the western side of the Rocky Mountains at Mount Robson Provincial Park, and ends in the Strait of Georgia at Vancouver. Named for explorer Simon Fraser, the river was a transportation route and source of food for the Indigenous people of the region long before Fraser travelled its waters. In 1858, gold was discovered on sandbars south of Yale, setting off the Fraser River Gold rush.

The Liard River is 1,115 km long and is a major tributary to the Mackenzie River.

​The South Saskatchewan River (1,392 km long) is a heavily utilized water source in southern Alberta and Saskatchewan and is a major tributary to the Saskatchewan River, ultimately discharging to Hudson Bay. Mean flow is 280 m3/s, but varies throughout the year, largely controlled by several dams and reservoirs along the river system. The South Saskatchewan River flows through an agriculturally productive region and is prone to periodic droughts and floods.

The Athabasca River is the longest river in Alberta (1,538 km). The first 168 km (located in Jasper National Park) are designated as a Canadian Heritage River. As a tributary to the Mackenzie River, water flowing on the Athabasca River eventually drains into the Arctic Ocean. River flow is highest during the summer and lowest during winter, and it is ice-covered from mid-November to mid-April.

The Saskatchewan River is 1,939 km long from the Rocky Mountains headwaters to Cedar Lake in central Manitoba. When including its longest tributary, the South Saskatchewan River, the Saskatchewan River is the fourth-longest river in Canada. It’s a major tributary to the Nelson River, ultimately draining into Hudson Bay. Its name is derived from the Cree word kisiskâciwanisîpiy meaning swift-flowing river. The Saskatchewan River was a major transportation route for First Nations for thousands of years and was an instrumental transportation and resource corridor during the fur trade and early European exploration.

Canada has seven primary vegetation regions, in addition to the marine flora found along the country’s coasts. Vegetation regions are geographical areas characterized by distinct plant communities. Community composition, determined primarily by climate (e.g., temperature, precipitation and sunlight), may be affected by factors such as geology, soil composition and erosion, water drainage patterns and human interference. Each vegetation region supports a characteristic animal community that may also affect its composition.

This is a full-length entry about Vegetation Regions. For a plain-language summary, please see Vegetation Regions (Plain-Language Summary).

The dark grey lunar surface reflects only 7% of the sunlight it receives (comparable to the reflectivity of black soil). The moon is dominated by thousands of craters, ranging from microscopic pits to gigantic Clavius, diameter 230 km.

Spruce forest is common below about 1200 m elevation, but the upper slopes of the ranges are treeless. The area supports an abundance of wildlife, including grizzly and BLACK BEAR, timber wolf, Dall sheep, mountain goat, caribou and moose.

Banks Island, 70 028 km2, fifth-largest island in Canada, is the westernmost island of the Arctic Archipelago.

The solar system contains many objects smaller than the planets (or their satellites) travelling in individual orbits about the SUN; space between the planets also contains myriad dust grains in the micron size range. Near Earth, dust concentrations are only a few hundred particles per cubic kilometre, but 35 000 to 100 000 t of extraterrestrial material enters the atmosphere annually, swept up by our planet from debris that is in its path or crosses its path.

Saltspring Island, BC, 182 km2 is the largest of the Gulf Islands, a group lying in the Strait of Georgia off the southeastern corner of Vancouver Island.

Canada has seven primary vegetation regions, in addition to the marine flora found along the country’s coasts. Each region is characterized by distinct plant communities. The plants in each region are mostly determined by climate. Other factors that determine which plants grow in which region include geology, soil composition and erosion, water drainage patterns and human interference.

This article is a plain-language summary of Vegetation Regions. If you are interested in reading about this topic in more depth, please see our full-length entry, Vegetation Regions.

​The Bow River runs through the most populated region of Alberta, intersecting cities such as Banff, Canmore, Cochrane and Calgary.

Cree Lake, 1435 km2, elevation 487 m, max length 81 km, max width 57 km, located in northern Saskatchewan west of Reindeer Lake and S of Lake Athabasca, is the fourth-largest lake in Saskatchewan.

The Rouge River is a tributary of the Ottawa River. Its source is Lac de la Fougère, in the northeast part of Rouge-Matawin Wildlife Reserve in Québec.

The Stikine River, 539 km long, rises in the Spatsizi Wilderness Park in northwestern British Columbia and flows in a wide arc north and west out of the Stikine Plateau uplands, then south through the spectacular Coast Mountains range to meet the Pacific Ocean near Wrangell, Alaska.

A forest region is a major geographic belt or zone characterized by a broad uniformity both in physiography and in the composition of the dominant tree species. Canada can be divided into eight forest regions.

Sverdrup Islands, located in the High Arctic, comprise a large island, Axel Heiberg, and two smaller ones, Ellef Ringnes and Amund Ringnes. Their geological history began as an area of subsidence and sedimentation on a landmass margin.