Adjacent ecoregions include the following (except for the first, all are taiga ecoregions): i) all of the area to the north and west (on the north side of Great Slave Lake) is the Low Arctic Tundra<\/a> (NA1114); ii) to the southwest, from the stretch between Great Slave Lake and Lake Athabasca, are the Mid-Continental Canadian Forests<\/a> (NA0608); iii) to the south, from the eastern tip of Lake Athabasca eastward to the southeastern corner of the ecoregion, are the Midwestern Canadian Shield Forests<\/a> (NA0609); and iv) to the southeast, adjacent to Hudson Bay, is the Southern Hudson Bay Taiga<\/a> (NA0616).<\/p>\n The ecoregion occupies a good part of the southeast corner of the Northwest Territories, south of the tree line. It also juts into Nunavut in a few places to the north and occupies the entire southwestern corner of that territory. Finally, the ecoregion also occurs in extreme northeastern Alberta, the far northern reaches of Saskatchewan, and the northwest corner of Manitoba (it approaches Hudson Bay but does not reach the shoreline).<\/p>\n The ecoregion was described in the WWF publication \u201cTerrestrial ecoregions of North America\u201d (Ricketts, et al., 1999); essentially the same text can be found on-line at WWF\u2019s site: www.worldwildlife.org<\/a>. The map above is a screen shot from WWF\u2019s Wildfinder site, now offline. There may also be additional information to be found on this ecoregion\u2019s page at Wikipedia or at other sites. Notable among many of its typical mammal species (moose, black bear, wolf, etc.), is caribou (both woodland and barren-ground); the ecoregion is perhaps the most frequented area in northwestern Canada for caribou in terms of their winter range.<\/p>\n No bird species are endemic to any of the taiga ecoregions.\u00a0<\/span>Notable elements of the avifauna in this ecoregion, according to WWF, are the Willow Ptarmigan (Lagopus lagopus<\/em>), Rock Ptarmigan (L. mutus<\/em>), Sandhill Crane (Grus canadensis<\/em>), Osprey (Pandion haliaetus<\/em>), Common Raven (Corvus corax<\/em>), Spruce Grouse (Dendragapus canadensis<\/em>), and waterfowl.<\/p>\n There are many species, particularly passerines, that are included below in the list of characteristic breeding species, which however only occur in extreme northeastern Alberta and on the very southwestern edge of the ecoregion in the Great Slave Lake (e.g., Blue-headed Vireo, Clay-colored Sparrow). One could be tempted to call them peripheral, but many of them are fairly common breeders in the small parts of the ecoregion they do occupy. If the ecoregion boundaries had been drawn just a small bit northward, many species would have dropped off the list.<\/p>\n Other than typical resource books for birds of northern Canada, I am not aware of any resources targeted to the birds of the ecoregion.<\/p>\n My list below of the \u201ccharacteristic species\u201d of the ecoregion (see a more detailed explanation on the About<\/a> page) are those that regularly occur in the ecoregion and thus excludes very rare or accidental species. The species are classed as residents (r), summer breeders (s), migrants (m), wintering (w), or peripheral (x), that is, occurring in the ecoregion but only on its periphery and more characteristic of an adjacent ecoregion. The peripheral species are not included in the ecoregion total.<\/p>\n The total\u00a0for this ecoregion is 156 species, of which 23 are resident year round, 112 are summer breeders, 20 are only to be found during migration, and 1 (Hoary Redpoll) is a wintering species only.<\/p>\n Summer breeders (s) 112<\/p>\n Resident breeders (r) 23<\/p>\n Migrants (m) 20<\/p>\n Wintering (w) 1<\/p>\n Peripheral (x) [not in Total] 18<\/p>\n TOTAL 156<\/p>\n DJG: 7 spp. (March 4, 2020)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Blogs posted from this ecoregion: The Uncommon Raven of the Northern Canadian Shield Taiga (March 2020) Adjacent ecoregions include the following (except for the first, all are taiga ecoregions): i) all of the area to the north and west (on the north side of Great Slave Lake) is the Low Arctic Tundra (NA1114); ii) to… Continue reading Northern Canadian Shield Taiga (NA0612)<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":87,"menu_order":6612,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"page-templates\/full-width.php","meta":{"footnotes":""},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/039adfd.netsolhost.com\/WordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/275"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/039adfd.netsolhost.com\/WordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/039adfd.netsolhost.com\/WordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/039adfd.netsolhost.com\/WordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/039adfd.netsolhost.com\/WordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=275"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/039adfd.netsolhost.com\/WordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/275\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1642,"href":"http:\/\/039adfd.netsolhost.com\/WordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/275\/revisions\/1642"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/039adfd.netsolhost.com\/WordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/87"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/039adfd.netsolhost.com\/WordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"NA0612\"](\"http:\/\/039adfd.netsolhost.com\/WordPress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/NA0612.jpg\")
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Description of the Ecoregion<\/span><\/h3>\n
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Briefly, drawing from WWF’s description, t<\/span>he ecoregion as a whole consists of\u00a0broad, sloping uplands and lowlands, with numerous small lakes and eskers that in the west, drain into Great Slave Lake. Bedrock outcrops are common, and maximum elevation reaches about 490 m above sea level. Generally, it is a transition zone between the tundra and the boreal forest. It abuts nearly one quarter of the linear extent of the tree line in North America. Vegetation consists of open and stunted stands of black spruce (Picea mariana<\/em>) and tamarack (Larix laricina<\/em>), with areas of white spruce (Picea glauca<\/em>), dwarf birch (Betula<\/em> sp.), ericaceous shrubs (Ericaceae), cottongrass (Eriophorum<\/em> spp.), lichen and moss. Drier sites can support open stands of white spruce, ericaceous shrubs and a ground cover of mosses and lichens. In the Tazin Lake Upland in the southwestern part of the ecoregion, there are medium to tall closed stands of quaking aspen (Populus tremuloides<\/em>) and balsam poplar (Populus balsamifera<\/em>), with white spruce, balsam fir (Abies balsamea<\/em>) and black spruce occurring in late successional stages. Fire is an important renewal agent.<\/p>\n
Birds of the Ecoregion<\/span><\/h3>\n
Resources for the Ecoregion Birder<\/span><\/h3>\nList of Characteristic Bird Species of the Ecoregion<\/h3>\n
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