Climate
This subarctic zone experiences cool summers that are short, with at least 24 hours of full daylight a year in its most northern reaches, and winters that are extremely cold and long, with at least one 24-hour period of complete darkness. Precipitation ranges from 250 to 500 mm (10-20 in.) annually throughout the zone, except in Labrador which may receive up to 800 mm (31 in.) along its coast, and typically increases from west to east.
The shallow soils remain damp, even soggy, year-round, and regularly freeze and thaw without drainage. This leads to shifting soil that randomly tilts growing trees, which has been likened to a "drunken forest".
Read more about this topic: Taiga Shield Ecozone (CEC)
Famous quotes containing the word climate:
“Certainly parents play a crucial role in the lives of individuals who are intellectually gifted or creatively talented. But this role is not one of active instruction, of teaching children skills,... rather, it is support and encouragement parents give children and the intellectual climate that they create in the home which seem to be the critical factors.”
—David Elkind (20th century)
“A tree is beautiful, but what’s more, it has a right to life; like water, the sun and the stars, it is essential. Life on earth is inconceivable without trees. Forests create climate, climate influences peoples’ character, and so on and so forth. There can be neither civilization nor happiness if forests crash down under the axe, if the climate is harsh and severe, if people are also harsh and severe.... What a terrible future!”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)
“The climate of Ohio is perfect, considered as the home of an ideal republican people. Climate has much to do with national character.... A climate which permits labor out-of-doors every month in the year and which requires industry to secure comfort—to provide food, shelter, clothing, fuel, etc.—is the very climate which secures the highest civilization.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)