Park Wardens - Arctic Cordillera

	Canada's Ecozones Arctic Cordillera EcozoneOverview
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	Image © Good Earth Productions Inc.
	A land frozen in time

	Located along the north-eastern edge of Nunavut and on the northernmost tip of Labrador, the Arctic Cordillera is Canada’s “Far North.” The zone is an area of vast polar ice fields, ice-covered mountains soaring to 2500 metres, and valleys and fjords that cut deep into the crystalline rock. The bedrock here is very old, most of it

originating in the Precambrian era, over 600 million years ago, when our planet was still young. Tree stumps found on Axel Heiberg Island in 1985 date back 40 million years, to a time when even this most northerly part of the ecozone must have been warmer and wetter. No longer. Now, the extremely cold climate keeps the terrain treeless.

The vast mountain chain that winds its way though this area is one of Canada’s two major ranges (the other being the Rockies in the West). The chain includes the Baffin Mountains on northeastern Baffin Island, and the Torngat Mountains at the northern tip of Labrador. Along with the other landforms here, the high mountains offer spectacular scenery, some of it in the three National Parks of the area – Quttinirpaaq (Inuktitut for “Top of the World”), on Ellesmere Island; Sirmilik (“Place of Glaciers”), on Baffin Island; and Auyuittuq (“The Land that Never Melts”), also on Baffin Island, where the
Penny Ice Cap spreads an enormous white mantle across 6000 square kilometres.


	Winds blast Adams Glacier in Quttinirpaaq National Park, Nunavut; Park Wardens working in Canada's Far North face these extreme conditions.
	Image © Parks Canada Ref. #13.02.03.07(170) Photograph by W. Lynch

Axel Heiberg Island
Penny Ice Cap

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	Axel Heiberg Fossil Forest

	Researchers and tourists have been busy disturbing the fossilized remains of the ancient forest of Axel Heiberg Island since its discovery in 1985 by a Canadian Geographical Survey team. Late 19th century northern expeditioner Otto Sverdrup named the island after expedition patron, Consul Axel Heiberg, but the fossil forest of mummified plants and trees (broadleaved deciduous) that lived over 40 million years ago is a recent far north attraction. The forest was alive during the Eocene period of the Pliocene age, when the earth was a much warmer place. Studies of the fossils reveal that the trees were over 35 metres tall and some of them had lived for 1,000 years. Fossils found include stumps of Meta-Sequoiea trees (similar to redwoods), pollen, leaves and animals such as soft-shelled turtles. The federal government's Canadian Conservation Institute has produced a guide to the area, stressing conservation and careful use of the fossil forest; erosion from wind, archaeological activity and tourist adventurers has degraded the once-pristine remnants.


	Penny Ice Cap
	Auyuittuq National Park of Canada
	Located on Baffin Island°s Cumberland Peninsula, north of the community named Pangnirtung, and making up a great part of Auyuittuq National Park of Canada, the Penny Ice Cap consists of several snow-capped glaciers. Set amidst the Arctic Cordillera ecozone°s mountains, the frozen landform was named after Captain William Penny, who as part of the 1850 search for the lost 1840s Franklin expedition, developed extensive geographical information about the Arctic region. Today, Penny Ice Cap and Auyittuq National Park attract extreme adventure mountain skiers, hikers, climbers and base jumpers from around the world.