Canada's Landscapes

Canada’s Landscapes CGC 1W1 Unit 2 CM Today’s Aerial Photo Challenge ● Due to this city’s hilly topography, streets are often an exciting experience for cyclists and cars! This is Lombard Street - often referred to as the “world’s most crooked street” ● Where is it? 2 Instructions (Teachers: you can post this at the top of the Google Classroom assignment with this lesson’s content). ● Jot down different landforms and landform regions of Canada. ● Create a Landform Regions of Canada Map. ● Take notes on plate tectonics, glaciation, erosion, former seas, and water. ● Create a Major Water Bodies of Canada Map. ● Take notes on soil, land cover, climate, ecozones, and human effects on the landscapes in Canada. ● Fill in “Comparing My Community to Another”. 3 Exploring Canadian Geography Units 1. Becoming a Geographer 2. Physical Geography 3. Economic Geography 4. Human Geography 5. Sustainability 4 Physical Geography Unit Lessons 1. Canada’s Landscapes 2. Travel and Tourism 3. Forces of Nature 4. Humans and the Environment 5. Climate Change 6. Showcase Canada 5 Canada’s Landscapes Big Ideas ● Natural environmental characteristics, such as climate, geology, drainage patterns, and vegetation, define the physical regions of Canada. ● Geological, climatic, and hydrological processes, phenomena, and events have shaped, and continue to shape, Canada’s natural landscape. 6 Thinking Concepts Developed in Unit 2 ● Spatial Significance ● Patterns and Trends ● Interrelationships ● Geographic Perspective 7 Transferable Skills Developed in Unit 2 Critical thinking and problem solving Innovation, creativity, and entrepreneurship Global citizenship and sustainability Digital literacy 8 Canada’s Landscapes ● Close your eyes and imagine you are a giant walking across Canada. ○ What landforms can you see? ○ Were you able to see five or more distinct landform regions? ○ What human activities occur on those landforms? ○ Are you able to see anything far away from where you live, or are you just seeing places you see regularly in your daily life? 9 Canada’s Landscapes - Landforms ● 10 Landforms 1. Brainstorm with those around you different types of landforms. 2. Mark with an asterisk (*) which types of landforms are in your part of Ontario. 3. Mark with a minus sign (-) which types of landforms are not anywhere in Canada. 11 Landforms ● In small groups, match the descriptions with the terms on the illustration. 12 Canada’s Landscapes - Landforms ● Areas of similar landforms are grouped together in landform regions in Canada. ● Take a look at the map, paying special attention to colours, and then answer the questions on the the slide that follows. ● Study the map so you can identify the locations of the landform regions as part of this unit’s test. 13 Landform Regions of Canada Innuitian Mountains km 0 400 Mountains Arctic Lowlands Plains Shield Canadian Shield Rocky Mountains Interior Plains Lowlands Hudson Bay Lowlands Major Island Mountain Peak Great Lakes-St Lawrence Lowlands Appalachian Mountains Canada’s Landscapes - Landforms ● Did you notice that there are three different mountain ranges in Canada? ● Did you notice that there are three different lowland areas in Canada? ● Which is the largest landform region? ● Which is the smallest landform region? ● Explain how the landscapes are similar and different from one another in various parts of Canada. 15 Canada’s Landscapes - Landforms ● To help you learn where the different landform regions are in Canada, create a Landform Regions of Canada Map using the instructions in the handout. 16 Canada’s Landscapes - Plate Tectonics ● The term Plate Tectonics refers to the forces that move pieces of the earth's crust. Boundaries mark the location where one plate is interacting with another plate in one of three ways: ○ Plates can converge, meaning they are colliding into each other. ○ Plates can diverge, meaning they are moving in opposite directions away from each other. ○ Plates can transform, meaning they slide past each other in opposite directions. 17 Canada’s Landscapes - Plate Tectonics ● Convergent Boundary: This movement occurs when plates move toward each other. It is visible on the surface of the earth where we see the folding and faulting of plates forming mountain chains. For example, the Indian and Eurasian plates are creating the Himalayan Mountains. 18 Notice the Indian and Eurasian plates are moving towards each other. 19 This process continues, pushing the Himalayas up higher every year by about 5 centimeters. 20 Canada’s Landscapes - Plate Tectonics ● Divergent Boundary: This movement occurs when plates move away from each other. When they separate, the magma from further inside the Earth is able to come to the surface, forming volcanoes. In Iceland, part of the country is located on the Eurasian plate and the other part is on the North American plate. 21 22 Canada’s Landscapes - Plate Tectonics ● Transform Boundary: This movement occurs when plates slide past each other in opposite directions. The sliding is not always smooth, so tension builds up and then the eventual release causes earthquakes. The most famous of these faults is the San Andreas Fault in California. 23 24 Canada’s Landscapes - Plate Tectonics ● In 1994, a major earthquake struck the Northridge area of Los Angeles. ○ 57 deaths ○ 8700 injuries ○ Billions in damages 25 Tectonic Plate Boundaries Colliding Diverging Transforming 26 Canada’s Landscapes - Plate Tectonics ● Notice the direction of movement for each plate. ● Find the boundaries of the North American Plate. ● What general direction is the Canadian part of that plate moving? Colliding Diverging Transforming 27 Canada’s Landscapes - Glaciation ● So what about places far from tectonic plate boundaries? ● In Canada, the dominant force of nature that created the landscapes were glaciers. ○ In the Rocky Mountains, the Cordilleran Glacier wove its way through the valleys. ○ Across the rest of Canada, the Laurentide Glacier scraped the land as it progressed and retreated. 28 Glaciation ● Glaciers form where more snow falls than melts. ● As the layers of snow pile up, the weight increases so the snow is packed together so tightly that an ice sheet is formed. ● The last ice age was 12,000 years ago. 29 Canada’s Landscapes - Glaciation ● Continental glaciers like the Laurentide level massive areas of the Earth’s surface through scraping and grinding of the ground by the moving ice. ● They scrape out large depressions which then fill with water when the glaciers retreat. ● Gradually, land around the edges of these glacial lakes rebounded, giving us the Great Lakes that we have today. 30 Canada’s Landscapes ● er v i eR c n . St e wr a L Kingston Uxbridge Toronto Niagara Falls The white outline is the current shores of Lake Ontario. 31 Canada’s Landscapes - Glaciation ● A glacier gathers and transports a huge amount of rock and soil as it moves. ● When a glacier melts, it deposits its load of sediment, creating a variety of landforms, including moraines, which are mounds of sediment at the downhill end of a glacier. 32 Canada’s Landscapes - Glaciation • Can you think of a local land feature that is a result of glacial action? – Near the end of the last ice age as the glacier was melting, it stalled its retreat in this part of Ontario. – As it melted, it deposited huge amounts of gravel that it had been collecting as it moved across the landscape. – That big pile of gravel (now covered by trees and so forth) is the...? 33 Glacial Landforms Ballantrae OAK RIDGES MORAINE Stouffville Brooklin Claremont 34 Notice how the moraine forms the divide of water flowing north v. south. 35 Canada’s Landscapes - Former Seas ● Lowlands are often rebounded land that used to be the bottom of lakes and seas. ● The Arctic Ocean, Hudson Bay, and Gulf of Mexico used to be all connected by the Western Inland Seaway. ● This explains the relatively flat nature of the landscape and the presence of oil and gas when decaying plant and animal matter were compressed over time at the bottom of the sea. 36 Canada’s Landscapes - Former Seas ● The Western Inland Seaway existed from 100 million years ago until 66 million years ago. ● As land shifted upwards, the waters receded. 37 Canada’s Landscapes - Erosion • Weathering and erosion describe the process where rocks are broken down by natural forces such as wind or water. 38 Canada’s Landscapes • 39 Canada’s Landscapes - Erosion ● The Appalachian Mountains were once as tall as the Himalayan Mountains (≅ 9000 m). ● Over millions of years, they have been eroded to their current height (≅ 2000 m). ● They are now (extremely large) rolling hills, covered in forests, instead of jagged rocks, covered in snow (due to high elevation). 40 Arctic Ocean Beaufort Sea Baffin Bay Major Water Bodies of Canada Great Bear Lake km 0 400 Davis Strait ke ac M nz ie ve Ri Great Slave Lake Craig Marlatt 3 July 2024 Hudson Strait r Lake Athabasca Labrador Sea Hudson Bay Ungava Bay Pacific Ocean Study the map so you can identify the locations of these water bodies as part of this unit’s test. Saskatchewan River Lake Winnipeg Lake Superior Lake Michigan James Bay r ve Lake Huron ce n re Ri aw .L t S Lake Ontario Lake Erie Gulf of St. Lawrence Bay of Fundy Atlantic Ocean Canada’s Landscapes - Water ● Water is the dominant attribute of Earth, covering 71% of the Earth’s surface. ● Canada is especially water rich, with over half of the world’s lakes in it! ● It is essential for life, agriculture, industry, and energy. ● More details in Unit 3, but let’s review the water cycle to see the various landscapes water creates in Canada. 42 Jot down in your notes the names and what happens with each of the major processes in the Water Cycle. The Water Cycle 43 Canada’s Landscapes - Land Cover ● Canada’s land surface is covered with different vegetation types, built environments, water, desert, rock, ice and snow formations. ● Natural Resources Canada uses remote sensing data collected by Earth observation satellites to produce accurate, efficient, and cost-effective data and images of Canada’s land cover. ● Which type of land cover exists where you live? 44 Land Cover of Canada Canada’s Landscapes - Climate ● Let’s look at the Climate Zones of Canada, as used by National Building Code standards. ● They used a measure of heating degree days which are equal to the number of degrees Celsius a given day's mean temperature is below 18°C. ○ If the daily mean temperature is 12°C, the HDD value for that day is equal to 6°C. ○ If the daily mean temperature is above 18°C, the HDD value for that day is set to zero. 46 Climate Zones of Canada Which Climate Zone do you live in? 47 Canada’s Landscapes - Ecozones • If we were to layer the landforms, soil, land cover, and climate maps of Canada on top of one another, we would see particular combinations of features that would create ecozones which are areas with a particular type of natural environment. • Which ecozone do you live in? 48 49 Canada’s Landscapes - People ● Cultural landscapes reveal the relationship between people and their natural environment. ● The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) seeks to encourage the identification, protection and preservation of cultural and natural heritage around the world considered to be of outstanding value to humanity. ● There are 11 cultural or mixed sites in Canada that are UNESCO’s World Heritage List. 50 Canada’s Landscapes - People With 1 or 2 others, summarize the significance of your assigned Cultural World Heritage Site. ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● L’Anse aux Meadows Landscape of Grand Pré Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump Old Town Lunenburg Pimachiowin Aki Historic District of Old Québec Red Bay Basque Whaling Station Rideau Canal SGang Gwaay Tr’ondëk-Klondike Writing-on-Stone / Áísínai’pi 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Who? What? Where? When? Why? 51 Canada’s Landscapes - A Comparison ● Let’s put together all of the pieces we’ve learned in this lesson. ○ We’ll fill in the “My Community” column together, and then you will be assigned a different community in Canada to compare. 52