The major geomorphological divisions of Canada are the Mountain Ranges in British Columbia, the Prairie Provinces, the low-lying Canadian Shield, the Arctic islands and the Maritime Provinces in the east. The Rocky Mountains consist of strongly folded Cainozoic formations, the Prairie Provinces gently-dipping strata, the Canadian Shield Pre-Cambrian crystalline and sedimentary rocks, the Arctic islands a mixture of granitic gneiss mountains and sedimentary lowlands and the Maritime Provinces folded and faulted Palaeozoic and Mesozoic rocks, an extension of the northern Appalachians.
Canada has a very long and diverse coastline (McCann 1980; Trenhaile 1990). Its diversity reflects not only the vast size of the country and its geological complexity, but also its range of climate and tides. It has 243,935 km of coastline fronting on the Pacific, Atlantic and Arctic Oceans, of which roughly 172,950 km or 70.9% lies within the Arctic.
Pleistocene glaciation was extensive in Canada. The...
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McCann SB (1980) The coastline of Canada. Canadian Geological Survey Paper 80–10
Trenhaile A (1990) The geomorphology of Canada. Oxford University Press, Toronto Ontario, Canada
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(2010). Canada – Editorial Introduction. In: Bird, E.C.F. (eds) Encyclopedia of the World's Coastal Landforms. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-8639-7_18
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