Heritage Community Foundation Presents
Alberta Online Encyclopedia
Top Left of Navigation Bar The Parkland Region of Alberta
Species at Risk in AlbertaView our site layout to navigate to specific areasSearch our site for informationObtain help for navigating our sitePlease emails us your questions and comments!View our partners that helped us in this project

Back to Natural Regions map
The Boreal Forest Region
The Canadian Shield Region
The Foothills Region
The Grassland Region
The Parkland Region
The Rocky Mountain Region

Visit Alberta Source!
Visit the Heritage Community Foundation
Visit Canada's Digital Collections

The Central Parkland Vegetation

Aspen ForestWithin the Central Parkland Subregion, there is a continuum from north to south of grassland with groves of aspen, to aspen parkland, to closed aspen forest in the north. True parkland vegetation with continuous aspen forest broken by grassland openings is now very rare due to large scale clearing throughout the province. In much of the rest of the Central Parkland Subregion, native vegetation is scarce because of the high productivity of the soils for agriculture. Consequently, most of the remaining parkland sites are on rougher terrain or sites with Solonetzic soils.

The grassland vegetation of the "park" is essentially the same as that of the Northern Fescue Subregion. Rough fescue dominates most sites with western porcupine grass being important on south-facing slopes in the southern part of the subregion and on solonetzic soil areas. Other grasses of solonetzic areas are June grass and western wheat grass.

Shrub communities are more extensive in the northern portion of the subregion and often extend in belts outward from the forest communities. 

Information provided by and printed with the permission of Alberta Community Development, Provincial Parks and Protected Areas.

Albertasource.ca | Contact Us | Partnerships
Copyright © Heritage Community Foundation All Rights Reserved