Forests By:Michael Shamash, Kaitlyn Arsenault, and Jordanna Khudaverdian (5B)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~● Canada has 348 million hectares of forest land, which represents 9% of the worlds

forests and 24% of the world’s boreal forests. These forests take over our Canadian landscape almost except for areas of Canada like the Arctic and the Prairies.

● The United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) defines forest land as an area where the tree canopy covers more than 10% of the total area and the trees, when mature, can grow to a height of more than 5 metres. It does not include land that is predominantly urban or used for agricultural purposes.

● Mountain pine beetles attack western forests in N.A. Since 1990 (major outbreak), these beetles killed about 50% of the total volume of commercial pine trees in BC.

● The following image shows where there have been major attacks of these beetles. Mostly in BC (since 2002).

● They can fly over 100 km as adults and thus can colonize new regions.

● Forests cover approximately 4 billion hectares of the Earth’s surface

● Forests occupy less than 10% of the territory in North America● From 2000 to 2005, forests were reduced by an average of 7.3 million hectares a year,

or 200 km2 a day. *hectares: The hectare is a unit of area equal to 1 square hectometre (1 hm2) or 10,000 square metres (104 m2)*

● Canada contains 10% of all the world's forests, with over 50% of the land space (representing almost 400,000,000 hectares) having tree cover of variable density.

● Over half of the trees are spruce, while poplar and pine make up over 20 percent of the remainder.

● The annual forested acreage is greater than that of the province of Prince Edward Island, less than one percent of Canada's forests are logged each year.

● In recent years, Nova Scotia has been harvesting over 40000 hectares per year of boreal forests. Ontario: over 150000 hectares harvested per yr. (similar to BC).

● Canada is 2nd largest exporter of forest products in the world.● When harvesting trees from the forests, up to 60% of the carbon gases in them can

remain in the forest -> greenhouse gas emissions -> global warming. ● In Canada, the majority of the forests grow in areas that are remote, sparsely populated

and areas that are not well suited for agriculture.● Forestry is a major industry in Canada, contributing over $23 billion to the economy in

2010. In the same year, over 190,000 people were directly employed by the forestry industry, contributing 1.3 percent of total employment and $8.8 billion in wages in 2009.

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