Page 1 2 3 4 5 Quiz

The Parks / Yukon Territory / Vuntut National Park

The southern third of the park is part of the Old Crow Flats, a unique landscape of more than 2000 shallow lakes, ponds and meandering rivers underlain with permafrost that extends from a few inches below the surface of the ground to depths of over 300 meters. Unable to drain away, meltwater accumulates in a watermaze of bogs and streams. Nearly surrounded by mountains, which rise as high as 1500 metres, the basin’s lakes, even at the low elevation of 300 metres, are well above the highest spring flooding. Abundant shallow water, 24 hour sunlight and warm summer temperatures make the lakes exceptionally productive for this latitude: the vegetation consists of wetland and aquatic species, moist tundra, cottongrass meadows and open stands of stunted white or black spruce. In the northern two thirds of the park are the old, gently-rising hills called pediments surrounding the upper Old Crow Basin and farther north and west, the foothills of the British Mountains are cloaked in sedge tussocks, shrubs and open stands of spruce - the northern limit of trees in Canada.