The Canadian Shield is rich in natural resources, including minerals, forests and freshwater. Mining began in the region in the mid-19th century and was key to Canada’s economic development.
How does the Canadian Shield impact the people in Canada?
Some of the resources that the Canadian Shield gives to Canadians are: 1) Furs – from fur bearing animals (hunting and trapping is still a large industry). 2) Minerals – this makes a lot of sense because the Shield is solid rock. Canadians extract copper, gold, nickel , zinc and lead from this area.
What did the Canadian Shield do?
Through the millions of years of these movements, the shield formed the nucleus around which geological processes built the North American continent.
What is the Canadian Shield in simple words?
noun Geology. the extensive region making up much of northern and central Canada underlain by Precambrian rocks that have been eroded to produce a low shieldlike profile.
Does the Canadian Shield cover most of Canada?
The Canadian Shield makes up about 50 per cent of Canada. The Canadian Shield stretches from Labrador to the Arctic. It covers parts of Saskatchewan and Alberta. It covers much of Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba and the Northwest Territories.
Why is the Canadian Shield so special?
The Canadian Shield constitutes the largest mass of exposed Precambrian rock on the face of Earth. The region, as a whole, is composed of ancient crystalline rocks whose complex structure attests to a long history of uplift and depression, mountain building (orogeny), and erosion.
What is special about the Canadian Shield?
The geology of the Canadian Shield is unique in that it is the oldest shield on Earth. Regions of the shield are as old as 2.5 to 4.28 billion years old. This makes them mere millions of years younger than the Earth itself. The Canadian Shield is broken up into different regions called provinces.
How does the Canadian Shield affect the environment?
The primary environmental disaster in the Canadian Shield is deforestation. Since the Shield is engulfed with immense forests, it enchants many industries dealing with timber. Due to the high number of trees, the rate of cutting them down is high for making furniture, paper, and many others.
What resources does the Canadian Shield provide?
The Canadian Shield is one of the world’s richest areas in terms of mineral ores, such as nickel, gold, silver, and copper. It also hosts prehistoric alkaline intrusions that are lower-middle Cambrian in age that produced rare minerals like sodalite and cancrinite.
How does the Canadian Shield affect climate?
The summers are short and warm. Precipitation is light with less than 300 mm of rain and snow each year. In the northern part of the Canadian Shield there is permafrost. The southern part of the Canadian Shield has cold and snowy winters, while the summers are warm.
What grows on the Canadian Shield?
There are many types of trees in the Canadian Shield such as Black Spruce and Jack Pine,as Fir and Aspen Poplar trees also grow in the Canadian Shield . The Black Spruce is a spruce tree and the Jack Pine is a pine tree. Look around and wait, buffalo berries will be seen!
Is the Canadian Shield protected?
CIRA Canadian Shield is a free protected DNS service that prevents you from connecting to malicious websites that might infect your device or steal your personal information.
What is the Canadian Shield mostly made of?
granite
The Canadian Shield is the ancient core of the North American Continent. It is composed mainly of highly metamorphosed granite, with smaller areas of metamorphosed sedimentary and igneous rocks and some areas of relatively horizontal but still quite ancient sedimentary rocks.
Can you build on the Canadian Shield?
Homes built on the Canadian shield often have a shallow foundation with a crawlspace instead of a full basement. Laying the foundation on an outcropping of the Shield requires more care and skill than pouring on flat ground, since the concrete forms must conform to the contours of the rock.
What is the Canadian Shield often called?
The Canadian Shield—also called the Laurentian Plateau, Laurentian Shield, Bouclier Canadien (French), or Precambrian Shield—is the massive U-shaped, almost circular region of the Earth that has extensive exposed Precambrian rock, forms the nucleus of North America, and extends from Lake Superior on the south to the
What covers most of Canada?
Canadian Shield. With an area close to 5 million km2, the Canadian Shield covers 48 per cent of Canada’s land surface (including freshwater lakes and Arctic islands). Even if the portion of the Shield found in the Arctic is excluded, the Canadian Shield remains the largest physiographic region in Canada.
Does the Canadian Shield stop earthquakes?
In the Far North of Ontario, there are very few earthquakes and the ones that do occur are very small and generally not felt. That’s because of the strong, stable Canadian Shield rocks in this area. The cause of these weak earthquakes is not related to boundaries between tectonic zones.
Is the Canadian Shield the most populated?
Landforms. Even though the Canadian Shield is the largest region in Canada it contains only 10% of Canada’s population. This “storehouse” is rich with natural resources. The Canadian shield has vast exposed areas of ancient rock.
Does the Canadian Shield have diamonds?
All of the world’s kimberlite diamond deposits are situated within ancient shield areas (cratons) in Africa, Australia, Russia, South America, and North America. It has long been known that diamonds could exist within the Canadian Shield, but up until 1991, exploration efforts had been unsuccessful.
What is the most important industry in the Canadian Shield?
Economy: The main income and industry in the shield is mining, the reason being the terrain of half of the Canadian Shield being rocky and almost no plants growing.
Why is the Canadian Shield good for tourism?
Every years, many people visit parts of the Canadian Shield to see the landscape. Many people canoe, fish, hunt and explore the many lakes, forests and animals in the Shield. Tourism is one of the main industries in the Canadian Shield, with many ways to get there and explore the surrounding area.