One can learn a great deal about the Boreal Shield by taking a trip to Sudbury

One One can learn a great deal about the Boreal Shield by taking a trip to Sudbury. It is a city in the Boreal Shield region where the lumber and mining industries dominate its economy. The paper and pulp mills and the Nickel mine are symbols of this great city. Also, the re-greening program at Sudbury is a success, making the city unique in Canada. Sudbury continues to grow and strive from the benefits of the lumber and mining industries and the world-own re-greening program. Sudbury is famous for its mines that are filled with many types of ores. After the ores are mined, they become valuable minerals such as nickel and copper. It all started when Tom Flanagan, who is a blacksmith, discovered copper sulphide while constructing the Canadian Pacific Railway back in the 1883. (Noda) These copper sulphides were believed to have come from a meteorite that had crashed near Sudbury 1. 8 billion years ago. It also created a crater, which is now called the Sudbury basin. Today, two big companies, INCO and Falcon Bridge, are the most well known for mining the valuable minerals in Sudbury. INCO has been operating for twenty more years while Falcon Bridge has been around for less then twenty years. (Aelick) These mining companies provide jobs to Canadians living in the Boreal Shield. INCO employed nearly 20000 Canadian workers to dig and mine for the ores. Their jobs require them to go down to the open pits, which are approximately 1. 2 km long and 180 m deep. Each time they mine, they take out about 60 million tones of ore. Each ore mined only has 2. 5% of valuable minerals usable. Other minerals in the ore include 1. 2% of silver, 1. % of copper and 97. 5% of unusable waste. In average, mines can produce 462,000 kg of nickel and 116, 800 tonnes of copper per day. The mining industry is very important to the economy in Sudbury because nickel mined there are worth about 1. 5 billion dollars. That is also about 15% of the world's production of nickel. In Ontario, about 60% of copper is mainly found in Sudbury. Over the years of developing INCO, fewer employees work for the company. Since now, there are only 5000 employees left because technology and machines are built to mine for them. With better technology, the mining companies in Sudbury can be more productive and competitive in the global economy. (Aelick) It is reasonable to say that the forest industries survive well in the Boreal Shield because of the plentiful lumbers in the area. The trees near Sudbury are grown really slowly because of its low precipitation and long winters. The types of trees are mostly white spruce, balsam fir, black spruce, jack pine and tamarack. Lumber productions and Pulp and Paper industries use about 80% of the technique of clear cutting on the forest because it is a lot cheaper than selective cutting. Wallace) They are environment friendly because they replanted trees after cutting so new forests can grow. Another reason why the forest industries are doing so well is because they use efficient tools. Some machines they use to harvest wood are the feller buncher, skidder and de-limber. The feller buncher is used to grab and cut down trees. A skidder is a machine that pulls the wood out of the ground. A de-limber is another machine that snaps off the limbs of the trees. (DOMTAR) Paper and Pulp Mills is a company that uses chips of wood to create wood pulp. They use about 2000 tonnes of wood chips and cook it as it turns into pulp and paper. The wastes go into lagoons. They will drain it out to collect solids that are to be sold as fertilizers. (Ramsay) Today, approximately 95% of Canada's papers are made out of wood pulp. This pulp can create different sorts of papers such as newspapers, paper towel, magazine paper and cardboard, which may be sold to other parts of Canada. The success from the re-greening program in Sudbury is well known and complimented by many people. Many years ago, Mrs. O'Leary's cow accidentally kicked over a lamp, which caused a fire and destroyed most of Chicago. This affected Sudbury because of the sulphur dioxide blown from Chicago by the wind and it destroyed much of Sudbury's vegetations. Vegetations have started to grow again. It has been hard to get rid the sulphur dioxide. Later in the 1969's super stacks were made to lift the poisonous gas to a height of 381 meters high. (Anonymous) As soon as the super stacks were created, the citizens want to re-green Sudbury. They started to plant thousands of trees but hardly any of them survived. They thought of new ways to plant and finally they experimented with limestone. It worked! As a result, they hired many students who were looking for part-time jobs. At one time, there were 200 students and 200 miners helping to re-green Sudbury. They would spend their summer pulling dead limbs, hauling countless bags of lime fertilizer and grass seed through Sudbury. Because of its success in re-greening, Sudbury won 4 national and international environmental improvement awards. One of them for highly respected commendation from the United Nations. (Globe and Mail) Along with the mining and forestry industries, the re-greening program in Sudbury allowed the city to be an important center for activities in the Boreal Shield. The mining and forestry created many jobs for Canadians and provide many products to the world. The re-greening program helped promote Sudbury and Canada to be environmental friendly places. All of this created a great place to live called Sudbury.