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Nunavut: Location and Land

Location

Nunavut, Canada's newest territory means "our land" in Inuktitut, the Inuit language. Nunavut is that vast expanse of northern Canada north of Manitoba and east of Hudson's Bay, including the Arctic and Non-arctic Islands to the East. It is made up of the central and eastern portions of the former Northwest Territories (NWT).

Landmass

Nunavut is a vast territory - containing 2,000,000 sq km, one fifth of Canada's land base. Consisting of all of Canada north of 60 degrees N. and east of the NWT, which is not within Quebec or Newfoundland, and the Islands in Hudson's Bay, James Bay and Ungava Bay that are not within Manitoba, Ontario, or Quebec.

The Land

Nunavut is a land of rock, snow, ice, and sea It is a land of forest, plains, glacial rock and frozen seas. Nunavut can be divided into two broad geographical regions:

• Taiga, the boreal forest belt that circles the world in the subarctic zone.
• Tundra, the vast, rocky plain in the Arctic regions, where the extreme climate has stunted vegetation.