Canadian Prairies in the context of Great Plains

New France was the territory colonized by France in North America, beginning with the exploration of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence by Jacques Cartier in 1534 and ending with the cession of New France to Great Britain and Spain in 1763 under the Treaty of Paris.

A vast viceroyalty, New France consisted of five colonies at its peak in 1712, each with its own administration: Canada, the most developed colony, which was divided into the districts of Quebec (around what is now called Quebec City), Trois-Rivières, and Montreal; Hudson Bay; Acadia in the northeast; Terre-Neuve on the island of Newfoundland; and Louisiana. It extended from Newfoundland to the Canadian Prairies and from Hudson Bay to the Gulf of Mexico, including all the Great Lakes of North America. The continent-traversing Saint Lawrence and Mississippi rivers were means of carrying French influence through much of North America.

The Numbered Treaties (or Post-Confederation Treaties) are a series of eleven treaties signed between the First Nations, one of three groups of Indigenous Peoples in Canada, and the reigning monarch of Canada (Victoria, Edward VII or George V) from 1871 to 1921. These agreements were created to allow the Government of Canada to pursue settlement and resource extraction in the affected regions, which includes the entirety of modern-day Alberta, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan, as well as parts of modern-day British Columbia, Ontario, the Northwest Territories, Nunavut, and Yukon. These treaties expanded the Dominion of Canada resulting in the displacement of Indigenous populations for large tracts of land in exchange for promises made to the indigenous people of the area. These terms were dependent on individual negotiations and so specific terms differed with each treaty.

These treaties came in two waves—Numbers 1 through 7 from 1871 to 1877 and Numbers 8 through 11 from 1899 to 1921. In the first wave, the treaties were key in advancing European settlement across the Prairie regions as well as the development of the Canadian Pacific Railway. In the second wave, resource extraction was the main motive for government officials. During this time, Canada introduced the Indian Act extending its control over the First Nations to education, government and legal rights. The federal government did provide emergency relief, on condition of the Indigenous peoples moving to the Indian reserve.

Tornado Alley, also known as Tornado Valley, is a loosely defined location of the central United States where tornadoes are most frequent. The term was first used in 1952 as the title of a research project to study severe weather in areas of Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Kansas, South Dakota, Iowa and Nebraska. Tornado climatologists distinguish peaks in activity in certain areas and storm chasers have long recognized the Great Plains tornado belt.

As a colloquial term there are no definitively set boundaries of Tornado Alley, but the area common to most definitions extends from Texas, through Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, Arkansas, North Dakota, Montana, Ohio, and eastern portions of Colorado, New Mexico and Wyoming. Research suggests that the main alley may be shifting eastward away from the Great Plains, and that tornadoes are also becoming more frequent in the northern and eastern parts of Tornado Alley where it reaches the Canadian Prairies, Ohio, Michigan, and Southern Ontario.

Prairies are ecosystems considered part of the temperate grasslands, savannas, and shrublands biome by ecologists, based on similar temperate climates, moderate rainfall, and a composition of grasses, herbs, and shrubs, rather than trees, as the dominant vegetation type. Temperate grassland regions include the Pampas of Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay, and the steppe of Romania, Ukraine, Russia, and Kazakhstan. Lands typically referred to as "prairie" (a French loan word) tend to be in North America. The term encompasses the lower and mid-latitude of the area referred to as the Interior Plains of Canada, the United States, and Mexico. It includes all of the Great Plains as well as the wetter, hillier land to the east. From west to east, generally the drier expanse of shortgrass prairie gives way to mixed grass prairie and ultimately the richer and wetter soils of the tallgrass prairie.

In the U.S., the area is constituted by most or all of the states, from north to south, of North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, and Oklahoma, and sizable parts of the states of Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Texas in the west, and to the east, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana. The Palouse of Washington and the Central Valley of California are also prairies. The Canadian Prairies occupy vast areas of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta. Prairies may contain various lush flora and fauna, often contain rich soil maintained by biodiversity, with a temperate climate and a varied view.

The Dominion Lands Act (French: Loi des terres fédérales) was an 1872 Canadian law that aimed to encourage the settlement of the Canadian Prairies and to help prevent the area being claimed by the United States. The act was closely based on the U.S. Homestead Act of 1862, setting conditions in which the western lands could be settled and their natural resources developed.

In 1871, the Government of Canada entered into Treaty 1 and Treaty 2 to obtain the consent of the Indigenous nations from the territories set out respectively in each Treaty. The Treaties provided for the taking up of lands "for immigration and settlement". In order to settle the area, Canada invited mass emigration by European and American pioneers, and by settlers from eastern Canada. The act echoed the American homestead system by offering ownership of 160 acres of land free (except for a small registration fee) to any man over 18 or any woman heading a household. They did not need to be British subjects in the early versions of the act, but had to live on the plot and improve it.

The Hudson Bay drainage basin is the drainage basin in northern North America where surface water empties into the Hudson Bay and adjoining waters. Spanning an area of about 3,861,400 square kilometres (1,490,900 sq mi) and with a mean discharge of about 30,900 m/s (1,090,000 cu ft/s), the basin is almost entirely within Canada. It encompasses parts of the Canadian Prairies, Central Canada, and Northern Canada. A small area of the basin is in the northern part of the Midwestern United States.

The Hudson Bay drainage basin coincides almost completely with the former territory of Rupert's Land, claimed by the Hudson's Bay Company in the 17th century. It was an ideal area for the early North American fur trade.

Alberta is a province in Canada. It is a part of Western Canada and is one of the three prairie provinces. Alberta is bordered by British Columbia to its west, Saskatchewan to its east, the Northwest Territories to its north, and the U.S. state of Montana to its south. Alberta and Saskatchewan are the only two landlocked Canadian provinces. The eastern part of the province is occupied by the Great Plains, while the western part borders the Rocky Mountains. The province has a predominantly continental climate, but seasonal temperatures tend to swing rapidly because it is so arid. Those swings are less pronounced in western Alberta because of its occasional Chinook winds.Alberta is the fourth largest province by area, at 661,848 square kilometres (255,541 square miles), and the fourth most populous, with 4,262,635 residents. Alberta's capital is Edmonton; its largest city is Calgary. The two cities are Alberta's largest census metropolitan areas. More than half of Albertans live in Edmonton or Calgary, which encourages a continuing rivalry between the two cities. English is the province's official language. In 2016, 76.0% of Albertans were anglophone, 1.8% were francophone and 22.2% were allophone.

Alberta's economy is advanced, open, market-based, and characterized by a highly educated workforce, strong institutions and property rights, and sophisticated financial markets. The service sector employs 80% of Albertans, in fields like healthcare, education, professional services, retail, tourism and financial services. The industrial base includes manufacturing, construction, and agriculture (10%, 5%, and 2% of employment respectively), while the knowledge economy includes about 3000 tech companies employing an estimated 60,000 people, mainly in Calgary and Edmonton. The energy sector employs 5% of Albertans but significantly impacts exports and GDP. Alberta's exports, primarily US-bound, consist of 70% oil and gas, 13% food products, and 12% industrial products. Oil and gas are culturally influential, having shaped politics, generated "striking it rich" narratives, and created boom-and-bust cycles. In 2023, Alberta's output was $350 billion, 15% of Canada's GDP.

The Cree are a North American Indigenous people, numbering more than 350,000 in Canada, where they form one of the country's largest First Nations macro-communities. There are numerous Cree peoples and several nations closely related to the Cree, these being the Plains Cree, Woodland Cree, Rocky Cree, Swampy Cree, Moose Cree, and East Cree with the Atikamekw, Innu, and Naskapi being closely related. Also closely related to the Cree are the Oji-Cree and Métis, both nations of mixed heritage, the former with Ojibweg (Chippewa) and the latter with European fur traders. Cree homelands account for a majority of eastern and central Canada, from Eeyou Istchee in the east in what is now Quebec to northern Ontario, much of the Canadian Prairies, and up into British Columbia and the Northwest Territories. Although a majority of Cree live in Canada, there are small communities in the United States, living mostly in Montana where they share Rocky Boy's Indian Reservation with the Ojibwe people.

The Cree are in a variety of treaty relations with the Canadian state. Most notable are the Numbered Treaties which cover a majority of Cree homelands. In Quebec, the East Cree (along with the Inuit of Nunavik) entered into one of the first modern treaties: the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement which formalized relations between the province and both Eeyou Istchee and the Nunavik region of Inuit Nunangat. A documented westward migration, over time, has been strongly associated with their roles as traders and hunters in the North American fur trade.

Calgary (/ˈkælɡəri/) is the largest city in the Canadian province of Alberta. As of 2021, the city proper had a population of 1,306,784 and a metropolitan population of 1,481,806, making Calgary the third-largest city and fifth-largest metropolitan area in Canada.

Calgary is at the confluence of the Bow River and the Elbow River in the southwestern portion of Alberta, in the transitional area between the Rocky Mountain Foothills and the Canadian Prairies, about 80 km (50 mi) east of the front ranges of the Canadian Rockies, roughly 299 km (186 mi) south of the provincial capital, Edmonton, and approximately 240 km (150 mi) north of the Canada–United States border. The city anchors the south end of the Statistics Canada-defined urban area, the Calgary–Edmonton Corridor.

Western Canada, also referred to as the Western provinces, Canadian West, or Western provinces of Canada, and commonly known within Canada as the West, is a Canadian region that includes the four western provinces just north of the Canada–United States border namely (from west to east) British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. The people of the region are often referred to as "Western Canadians" or "Westerners", and though diverse from province to province are largely seen as being collectively distinct from other Canadians along cultural, linguistic, socioeconomic, geographic and political lines. They account for approximately 32% of Canada's total population.

The region is further subdivided geographically and culturally between British Columbia, which is mostly on the western side of the Canadian Rockies and often referred to as the "west coast", and the "Prairie Provinces" (commonly known as "the Prairies"), which include those provinces on the eastern side of the Rockies yet west of Ontario - Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. Alberta and British Columbia are also sometimes subcategorized together, either as the "Rockie Provinces" or "mountain provinces" owing to both hosting large swathes of the mountain range, or due to shared socioeconomic factors such as their highly urbanized populations (three of Canada's five largest cities are Calgary, Edmonton, and Vancouver) and significant interprovincial mobility between the two. Alberta and Saskatchewan, having once been united as a single territory, are also sometimes subcategorized together due to shared political and economic histories, as well as similar historic migratory patterns from Eastern Europe.

The Canadian Rockies (French: Rocheuses canadiennes) or Canadian Rocky Mountains, comprising both the Alberta Rockies and the British Columbian Rockies, is the Canadian segment of the North American Rocky Mountains. It is the easternmost part of the Canadian Cordillera, which is the northern segment of the North American Cordillera, the expansive system of interconnected mountain ranges between the Interior Plains and the Pacific Coast, that runs northwest–southeast from central Alaska to the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in Mexico.

Canada officially defines the Rocky Mountains system as the mountain chains east of the Rocky Mountain Trench extending from the Liard River valley in northern British Columbia to the Albuquerque Basin in New Mexico, not including the Mackenzie, Richardson and British Mountains/Brooks Range in Yukon and Alaska (which are all included as the "Arctic Rockies" in the United States' definition of the Rocky Mountains system). The Canadian Rockies, being the northern segment of this chain, is thus defined as comprising the central-eastern section of the North American Cordillera, between the Prairies of Alberta and the Liard Plain of northeastern British Columbia to the east and the Interior Mountains/Plateau and Columbia Mountains to the west. It is divided into the Northern Rockies (which is further subdivided into the Muskwa and Hart Ranges) and Continental Ranges, separated by the McGregor River valley, the McGregor Pass and the Kakwa River valley.

Standard Canadian English is the largely homogeneous variety of Canadian English that is spoken particularly across Ontario and Western Canada, as well as throughout Canada among urban middle-class speakers from English-speaking families, excluding the regional dialects of Atlantic Canadian English. Canadian English has a mostly uniform phonology and much less dialectal diversity than neighbouring American English. In particular, Standard Canadian English is defined by the cot–caught merger to [ɒ] and an accompanying chain shift of vowel sounds, which is called the Canadian Shift. A subset of the dialect geographically at its central core, excluding British Columbia to the west and everything east of Montreal, has been called Inland Canadian English. It is further defined by both of the phenomena that are known as Canadian raising (which is found also in British Columbia and Ontario): the production of /oʊ/ and /aʊ/ with back starting points in the mouth and the production of /eɪ/ with a front starting point and very little glide that is almost [e] in the Canadian Prairies.

Climate change is greatly impacting Canada's environment and landscapes. Extreme weather has become more frequent and severe because of the continued release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. The number of climate change–related events, such as the 2021 British Columbia Floods and an increasing number of forest fires, has become an increasing concern over time. Canada's annual average temperature over land warmed by 1.7 °C (3.1 °F) between 1948 and 2016. The rate of warming is highest in Canada's north, the Prairies, and northern British Columbia. The country's precipitation has increased in recent years and wildfires expanded from seasonal events to year-round threats.

As of 2022, Canada was the world's 11th highest emitter of carbon dioxide (CO₂) and as of 2021 the 7th highest emitter of greenhouse gases. Canada has a long history of producing industrial emissions going back to the late 19th century. In 2022 transport, oil and gas extraction, and fugitive emissions together emitted 82% of the country's total emissions. From 1990 to 2022, GHG emissions from conventional oil production increased by 24%, those from multi-stage fracturing techniques increased by 56%, and emissions from oil sands production increased by 467%. This has led to criticism against Canada for committing to reducing greenhouse emissions while supporting its oil and gas industry.

The census geographic units of Canada are the census subdivisions defined and used by Canada's federal government statistics bureau Statistics Canada to conduct the country's quinquennial census. These areas exist solely for the purposes of statistical analysis and presentation; they have no government of their own. They exist on four levels: the top-level (first-level) divisions are Canada's provinces and territories; these are divided into second-level census divisions, which in turn are divided into third-level census subdivisions (often corresponding to municipalities) and fourth-level dissemination areas.

In some provinces, census divisions correspond to the province's second-level administrative divisions such as a county or another similar unit of political organization. In the prairie provinces, census divisions do not correspond to the province's administrative divisions, but rather group multiple administrative divisions together. In Newfoundland and Labrador, the boundaries are set by Statistics Canada as no such level of government exists. Two of Canada's three territories are also divided into census divisions.

The Métis (/mɛˈtiː(s)/ meh-TEE(SS); French: [metis], Canadian French: [meˈt͡sɪs], Michif: [mɪˈt͡ʃɪf]) are a mixed-race Indigenous people whose historical homelands include Canada's three Prairie Provinces extending into parts of Quebec, Ontario, British Columbia, the Northwest Territories and the northwest United States. They have a shared history and culture, deriving from specific mixed European (primarily French, Scottish, and English) and Indigenous ancestry (primarily Cree with strong kinship to Cree people and communities), which became distinct through ethnogenesis by the mid-18th century, during the early years of the North American fur trade.

In Canada, the Métis, with a population of 624,220 as of 2021, are one of three legally recognized Indigenous peoples in the Constitution Act, 1982, along with the First Nations and Inuit.

The plains bison (Bison bison bison) is one of two subspecies/ecotypes of the American bison, the other being the wood bison (B. b. athabascae). A natural population of plains bison survives in Yellowstone National Park (the Yellowstone Park bison herd consisting of an estimated 4,800 bison). Multiple smaller reintroduced herds of bison in many ranges within the midwestern and western United States (including Alaska, but not Hawaii) as well as southern portions of the Canadian Prairies.

Prairie dogs (genus Cynomys) are herbivorous burrowing ground squirrels native to the grasslands of North America. There are five recognized species of prairie dog: black-tailed, white-tailed, Gunnison's, Utah, and Mexican prairie dogs. In Mexico, prairie dogs are found primarily in the northern states, which lie at the southern end of the Great Plains: northeastern Sonora, north and northeastern Chihuahua, northern Coahuila, northern Nuevo León, and northern Tamaulipas. In the United States, they range primarily to the west of the Mississippi River, though they have also been introduced in a few eastern locales. They are also found in the Canadian Prairies. Despite the name, they are not actually canines; prairie dogs, along with the marmots, chipmunks, and several other basal genera belong to the ground squirrels (tribe Marmotini), part of the larger squirrel family (Sciuridae).

Prairie dogs are considered a keystone species, with their mounds often being used by other species. Their mound-building encourages grass development and renewal of topsoil, with rich mineral and nutrient renewal in the soil, which can be crucial for soil quality and agriculture. They are extremely important in the food chain, being important to diets of many animals such as the black-footed ferret, swift fox, golden eagle, red tailed hawk, American badger, and coyote. Other species, such as the golden-mantled ground squirrel, mountain plover, and the burrowing owl, also rely on prairie dog burrows for nesting areas. Grazing species, such as plains bison, pronghorn, and mule deer, have shown a proclivity for grazing on the same land used by prairie dogs, with their regeneration of topsoil being important for maintaining healthy humus. Prairie dogs have some of the most complex systems of communication and social structures in the animal kingdom.

In geology, saltation (from Latin saltus 'leap, jump') is a specific type of particle transport by fluids such as wind or water. It occurs when loose materials are removed from a bed and carried by the fluid, before being transported back to the surface. Examples include pebble transport by rivers, sand drift over desert surfaces, soil blowing over fields, and snow drift over smooth surfaces such as those in the Arctic or Canadian Prairies.