Canadian Shield
The Canadian Shield is a landform region that covers more than half of Canada, located in northeast Alberta, northern Saskatchewan, northern Manitoba, southern Northwest Territories, Ontario, Quebec, and Newfoundland. Three major bodies of water in this region are Lake Athabasca, Reindeer Lake, and part of Lake Superior. This region was formed in the Precambrian Era by volcanic activity. This landform consists of sedimentary, igneous, and metamorphic rock that contains valuable metallic minerals such as gold, lead, nickel, copper, and zinc. The vegetation in the Canadian Shield is fairly different from the rest of Canada. Mainly the Canadian Shield is covered in deciduous and coniferous trees, however there is tundra in the north. The variety of Boreal and Taiga forests contain mainly Birch, Tamarack, Spruce, Aspen, Willow, Hemlock, and Pine trees. This region only has a thin layer of soil, yet the trees in the Canadian Shield only require a small amount of soil to grow, since they cannot root into rock. This region tends to have long cold winters and warm dry summers, therefore all the natural vegetation is able to survive during these conditions. One major city within the Canadian Shield is Montreal and a capital city is Iqualuit. An economic activity that is dependent on the natural resources in this region is forestry, as the Canadian Shield has vast amounts of boreal and Taiga forests, around the same size of the Amazon Rainforest. This produces many jobs, money, and supplies a lot of materials for buildings, paper, furniture, etc. An environmental impact that is taking place in this region is the amount of clear cutting of trees. This greatly affects habitats and ecosystems and humans are eventually going to run out of tees to cut down, due to the increase in clear cutting.