304 



Canadian Forestry Journal, July, 1919 



Franklin and Dr. Richardson's expeditions, be- 

 sides the various explorers and travellers v^ho 

 more recently (20th century) have used the 

 Coppermine River as a kind of highway to or 

 from the Arctic Ocean. Nowhere, however, is 

 the northern limit of the white spruce treated 

 from an ecological point of view, or in any detail 

 at each place visited. 



Grow Only With Protection. 



With the exception of the Coppermine River 

 and a small river (Naparktoktuak) about ten 

 miles east of it, no white spruce is found on the 

 other river valleys further east or first when one 

 reaches their upper courses. According to Dr. 

 R. M. Anderson the spruce growth in the small, 

 more unprotected Naparkoktuak River (its 

 name is Eskimo for spruce), is very stunted 

 (below six feet) and scattered, only a little 

 grove of trees being found here and there; but 

 the trees reach to within a dozen miles of the 

 Arctic coast. No observations were made in 

 this river as to whether the trees were attacked 

 by forest insects (no larger dead trees were 

 observed) or not; but it is not likely to have 

 been the case to any extent, the trees being too 

 small and without connection with more ex- 

 tensive spruce growths; barren grounds in- 

 tervening. 



It is about 67-1/2° Lat. n. that the most nor- 

 thern spruce trees along the river are found. 

 The outposts are represented by about a dozen 

 dwarfed trees which grow in scattered formation 

 up the steep side of the west bank. 1 only saw 

 them at a distance, but they seemed not to 

 exceed four feet m height. 



From here on, as one travels up the river, 

 the trees increase in number and height and are 

 found here and there on the banks; they are 

 especially numerous and well developed in the 

 mouths of small creeks — valleys joining the 

 river, where they have some protection. We 

 camped in a fair grove of trees on the east side 

 of the river (near Escape Rapids) at a ^^mall 

 creek-tributary. The best developed trees (up 

 to about a dozen feet high) were found on a 

 small flat at the mouth of the creek. As one 

 went away from the ecreek or higher up the 

 slope the growth became more scattered as also 

 the trees smaller, and finally none at all were 

 found. But old stumps and dead trunks of 

 these trees showed that the spruce growth form- 

 erly attained a considerable size and had a more 

 extended range up the slopes of this creek. 

 As we continued further up the river on the 

 east side the growths of trees became more 

 numerous, and a larger creek near Sandstone 



Rapids, where I stayed four or five days, af- 

 forded good opportunities for observations on 

 the spruce trees here. 



The west bank of the Coppermine River at 

 the mouth of this creek is quite barren. On the 

 east bank of the river the spruce growth is best 

 developed (as a real small forest of high trees) 

 in a depression south of and on top of a hi;?her 

 rounded cliff at the narrow place of the river 

 a little north of the creek. The spruce vegeta- 

 tion is also well developed on a similar cliff- 

 exposure on the east bank of the river a little 

 south of the creek while the trees at the mouth 

 of the creek are represented by a few scattered 

 clusters and rather dwarfed. Following up this 

 creek on the east bank of the river a grove of 

 fair-sized trees are found in a protected pocket 

 on the north side of the creek, but otherwise 

 the growth gets more and more scattered and 

 the trees dwarfed, until they quite disappear on 

 top of the slopes. The biggest spruce tree I 

 saw in this creek measured 59 inches \n cir- 

 cumference about three feet from the ground, 

 and it was 20 to 30 feet high. All the large 

 trees had many dead branches among the living 

 ones; and most of them were to a lesser or 

 larger degree attacked by forest insects. Scat- 

 tered over the region occupied by the living 

 trees, and for a considerable distance outside 

 of these were many dead trees and stumps 

 standing, mostly deprived of their bark and of 

 a still larger size than most of the living ones. 

 They practically all showed signs of having 

 been killed by forest insects. 



From what I saw of the growth of white 

 spruce on the lower Coppermine River it is 

 evident that the occurrence of the trees depends 

 principally upon the amount of protection avail- 

 able from the sweeping winter winds. As the 

 winds mostly come from the north the spruce 

 trees are found almost exclusively and attain 

 their greatest development in localities protected 

 from that direction, where also they benefit 

 most from the warm rays of the sun. The kind 

 of soil present at the various places of growth is 

 much less important. I have seen real forests 

 growing on almost the bare cliffs, while no trees 

 at all were found on the exposed tundra. 



Young Trees no Longer Thrive. 



Another striking characteristic is the scarcity 

 of very young spruce trees m this northern limit 

 of their growth. Perhaps the intense cold and 

 the sweeping wind in the winter time kills off 

 most of the small seedlings which may have 

 succeeded in taking root during the summer. 

 This explantion is also indicated by an ex- 



