Browse "Natural resources"

The James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement (JBNQA) is a legal agreement signed on 11 November 1975 by the government of Quebec, the government of Canada, Hydro-Québec and two of its subsidiaries, the Grand Council of the Crees of Quebec and the Northern Quebec Inuit Association. Described by many as the “first modern treaty,” the JBNQA redefined and framed land management as well as the relationship between the Quebecois state and the Indigenous peoples of the James Bay and Northern Quebec region (see James Bay Project, Treaties with Indigenous Peoples in Canada).

Over a century’s worth of shifting environmental policy means that today, maintaining Canada’s forests is as important as cutting them down. Tree planting is an essential part of this maintenance, and each year thousands of young Canadians trek through rough conditions and remote areas to replant thousands of trees.

CANADIANS ARE now committed to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions under the Kyoto Protocol, even though Ottawa may not have a well-developed plan. But Dean Scammell does, and he's a good six years ahead of the government. In 1999, Scammell started building his 2,400-sq.

Canada’s lumber and wood industries convert logs into various products, from lumber to wood chips.

Overall, Canada is blessed with abundant freshwater resources, but their availability varies considerably from one season or year to another, and from one region to another.

In 1971, Hydro-Québec and the Québec government initiated the James Bay Project, a monumental hydroelectric-power development on the east coast of James Bay. Over the course of two phases they built a total of eight generating stations, allowing for the pollution-free production of a significant portion of Québec's electricity. However, the projects also profoundly disrupted the environment and the Indigenous communities living in the region, the effects of which are still felt today.

One of the easiest ways to understand bitumen is to compare it to its cousin, conventional crude oil. Whereas conventional crude oil flows freely, bitumen does not. At room temperature it looks like cold molasses, and must be either heated or diluted before it flows.

Coal is a fossil fuel that has been used as a source of energy in Canada since the 18th century. Canada is home to 0.6 per cent of the world’s coal resources. Most of the country’s coal reserves (over 95 per cent) are found in Alberta, British Columbia and Saskatchewan. In recent years, the environmental movement has opposed the coal industry for disrupting local ecosystems, creating adverse health effects and for its large contribution to the carbon-dioxide emissions that drive climate change. In an effort to curb harmful emissions, the federal government has signalled its intention to phase out traditional coal-fired electricity by 2030, and Alberta has a plan to achieve the same goal as a province.

Canada Land Inventory is a comprehensive federal-provincial survey of LAND capability and use for regional resource and land-use planning established under the Agricultural Rehabilitation and Development Act in 1961.

Canada’s national parks are protected areas established under federal legislation to preserve Canada’s natural heritage. They are administered by Parks Canada, a government agency that evolved from the world’s first national parks service, the Dominion Parks Branch, established in 1911. The National Parks System Plan, developed in 1970, divided Canada into 39 natural regions and set the goal of representing each region with at least one national park. Canada now has 48 national parks and national park reserves in 30 of these regions. In total, the parks cover more than 340,000 km2, which is over 3 per cent of Canada’s landmass. They protect important land and marine habitats, geographical features and sites of cultural significance. National parks also benefit local economies and the tourism industry in Canada.

Natural gas ranks among the fastest-growing energy sources in Canada and is seen by many in the energy industry as a game-changer, a comparatively clean, low-cost and versatile fuel. It can directly generate power and heat and can be chemically altered to produce a wide range of useful commodity chemicals. It burns cleaner and more efficiently than other fossil fuels, releasing significantly fewer harmful pollutants into the atmosphere. Natural gas is colorless, odourless, shapeless, lighter than air and contains a mixture of several hydrocarbon gases, which are organic compounds consisting of some combination of hydrogen and carbon molecules.

The primary consumers of natural gas are the industrial (54.1 per cent), residential (26.6 per cent) and commercial sectors (19.3 per cent). Canada is the fifth largest natural gas producer after the United States, Russia, Iran and Qatar. Currently, all of Canada’s natural gas exports go to the United States through a network of pipelines, making Canada the largest foreign source of US natural gas imports. At the end of 2016, Canada had 76.7 trillion cubic feet of proven natural gas reserves and had produced 152 billion cubic metres of natural gas that year. It is forecasted that global natural gas consumption will double by 2035.

Classification involves arranging individual units with similar characteristics into groups. Soils do not occur as discrete entities; thus the unit of measurement for soil is not obvious.

Commission of Conservation, established 1909 to provide Canadian governments with the most up-to-date scientific advice on the CONSERVATION of human and natural resources.

Soil conservation is a combination of all methods of management and land use that safeguard the soil against depletion or deterioration by natural or human-induced factors.

The Department of Natural Resources was established in 1993, replacing Energy, Mines and Resources as a federal agency. Some of the department's components have long histories. The Department of Mines, created in 1907, was reorganized as the Department of Mines and Resources in 1936.

The WCED was formed to consider the key issues related to environment and development, and to provide feasible and innovative ideas to deal with them. Sustainable development was proposed to meet this challenge.

Throughout the late 1980s and the 1990s, there was a tremendous evolution of FORESTRY in Canada and around the world. Forestry became increasingly important for both the ECONOMY and the ENVIRONMENT, and the practice of forestry became more complex.

The term "energy" is often used interchangeably with the term "power," but incorrectly so. Energy is defined as the capacity to do work and is measured in joules (J) or watt hours (1 Wh = 3600 J).

Solar Energy is electromagnetic radiation (including infrared, visible and ultraviolet light) released by thermonuclear reactions in the core of the sun.