Geography of Yukon

Geography Of Yukon

The Yukon is in the northwestern corner of Canada and is bordered by Alaska, Northwest Territories, and British Columbia. The sparsely populated territory abounds with natural scenic beauty, with snowmelt lakes and perennial white-capped mountains, including many of Canada's highest mountains. The territory's climate is Arctic in the north (north of Old Crow), subarctic in the central region, between north of Whitehorse and Old Crow, and has a humid continental climate in the far south, south of Whitehorse and in areas close to the BC border. The long sunshine hours in the short summer allow a profusion of flowers and fruit to blossom. Most of the territory is boreal forest, tundra being the main vegetation zone only in the extreme north and at high elevations. The world's largest non-polar icefield, the Kluane icefields is mostly in the Yukon.

The territory is about the shape of a right triangle, bordering the American state of Alaska to the west, the Northwest Territories to the east and British Columbia to the south. The Yukon covers 482,443 square kilometres, of which 474,391 km² is land and 8,052 km² is water.

It is bounded on the south by the 60th parallel of latitude. Its northern coast is on the Beaufort Sea. Its western boundary is 141° west longitude. Its ragged eastern boundary mostly follows the divide between the Yukon River Basin and the Mackenzie River watershed to the east in the Mackenzie mountains.