Ecological Regions Of The Northwest Territories Southern Arctic

Coniferous trees are restricted to locally warm, dry places on slopes and along rivers where they usually occur as stunted individuals or groves, twisted and sheared by cold winter winds bearing sharp ice crystals that cut needles and branchlets. Low-elevation wet coastal plains, glacial till blankets, glacial outwash features, weather-worn plateaus that have been ice-free for hundreds of thousands of years, rocky barrens and river valleys add physical, biological and visual diversity to this unique northern landscape."--Preface.