Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
The Torngat Mountains—the highest in eastern Canada— rise imperiously from the Labrador Sea.
This uplifting of the land—a process known as isostasy—has created a skerry-type coastline, where many
bald islands fringe the mainland. The central coast between Okak and Lake Melville is guarded by some four
thousand islands, which alone account for one-third of the total shoreline length. The fiords, bays, and pas-
sages that thread through this maze of islands extend 60 kilometers (37 miles) seaward in the region of Nain.
By contrast, southern Labrador consists of a gentler, more rolling type of landscape where the glacier depos-
ited tills and built up drumlins.
The cold waters of the Labrador Current create a strip of tundra along the outer coast and the islands, which
narrows until forest replaces it south of the Strait of Belle Isle. In the interior, the forest limit extends farther
north, near the latitude of Nain.
