Geography of Canada
Location: Northern North America, bordering the North Atlantic Ocean and North Pacific Ocean, north of the conterminous United States.Canada is the second-largest country in the world in terms of area after Russia, with large portions of its territory being wilderness and sparsely populated. Canada has the longest "undefended" border in the world with the US. Nearly 90% of the population is concentrated within 160 km of the Canada-US border. Canada also has the world's longest coastline.
Geographic coordinates: 60° 00 N, 95° 00 W
Map references: North America
Area:
- total: 9,976,140; km²
- land: 9,220,970 km²
- water: 755,170 km²
- Australia comparative: slightly less than 1.3 times larger than Australia
- United Kingdom comparative: slightly more than 40.9 times larger than the UK
- United States comparative: slightly larger than the US
Maritime claims:
- territorial sea: 12 nm
- contiguous zone: 24 nm
- exclusive economic zone: 200 nm
- continental shelf: 200 nm or to the edge of the continental margin
- France - French islands of Saint-Pierre and Miquelon
- Denmark - Danish dependency of Greenland
- United States
- depending upon how continental shelf claims proceed in the Arctic Ocean, Canada may end up sharing Maritime borders with several other polar nations
Terrain: Canada has a varied terrain. The west of the country is extremely mountainous with the Canadian Rockies being the largest range. The center area of the country is a vast sedimentary plain that makes up most of the provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. The northern parts of Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, and Quebec are located on a vast rock base known as the Canadian Shield. The Shield cannot support agriculture, but does have extensive mineral reserves. The plains of Saskatchewan and Manitoba are known as the "breadbasket", due to the massive tracts of (largely flat) arable agricultural land. The southern sections of Ontario and Quebec in the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence basin are home to rich agricultural land hosting produce and dairy farming operations, as well as being the most populated part of the country. The Appalachian Mountains traverse New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Quebec's Gaspe Peninsula, and the island of Newfoundland creating rolling hills indented by river valleys.
Elevation extremes:
- lowest point: sea level 0 m
- highest point: Mount Logan 5,959 m
- northernmost town: Grise Fiord, Nunavut (including military/weather stations: Alert, Nunavut)
- southernmost town: Colchester, Ontario
- easternmost town: St. John's, Newfoundland, Newfoundland and Labrador
- westernmost town: Beaver Creek, Yukon
- see also extreme points of Canada
Land use:
- arable land: 5%
- permanent crops: 0%
- permanent pastures: 3%
- forests and woodland: 54%
- other: 38% (1993 est.)
Natural hazards: continuous permafrost in north is a serious obstacle to development; cyclonic storms form east of the Rocky Mountains, a result of the mixing of air masses from the Arctic, Pacific, and North American interior, and produce most of the country's rain and snow
Environment - current issues: air pollution and resulting acid rain severely affecting lakes and damaging forests; metal smelting, coal-burning utilities, and vehicle emissions impacting on agricultural and forest productivity; ocean waters becoming contaminated due to agricultural, industrial, mining, and forestry activities
Environment - international agreements:
- party to: Air Pollution, Air Pollution-Nitrogen Oxides, Air Pollution-Persistent Organic Pollutants, Air Pollution-Sulphur 85, Air Pollution-Sulphur 94, Antarctic Treaty, Biodiversity, Climate Change-Kyoto Protocol, Desertification, Endangered Species, Environmental Modification, Hazardous Wastes, Marine Dumping, Nuclear Test Ban, Ozone Layer Protection, Ship Pollution, Tropical Timber 83, Tropical Timber 94, Wetlands, Whaling
- signed, but not ratified: Air Pollution-Volatile Organic Compounds, Antarctic-Environmental Protocol, Law of the Sea, Marine Life Conservation
- See also: Canada