Comparison of permafrost conditions in Canada and the USSR

• Published in: Polar Record
• Main Author: Brown, R. J. E.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge University Press (CUP) 1967
• Subjects: General Earth and Planetary Sciences; Ecology; Geography, Planning and Development; Canada; permafrost; Polar Record; James Bay
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0032247400058411; https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0032247400058411

Canada and the USSR together possess most of the territory in the Northern Hemisphere underlain by permafrost or perennially frozen ground. As about one half of the land area of each country is affected, the permafrost region of the Soviet Union is 2½ times larger than that of Canada. Outside mountainous regions, permafrost extends southward in Canada to the southern tip of James Bay at lat 51° N (Brown, in press). Permafrost extends farther south in eastern Asia, however, and occurs in Outer Mongolia and Manchuria to about lat 47° N Fig 1) (Baranov, 1959; Nekrasov, 1962).