New Brunswick Geography, Climate & Nature

New Brunswick covers 72,908 square kilometres, bordering Quebec to the northwest, the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the northeast, Nova Scotia to the east across the narrow Isthmus of Chignecto, the Bay of Fundy to the southeast and the U.S. state of Maine to the southwest. About 83% of it is forested. Unlike the other Maritime provinces, it has a large sheltered interior removed from oceanic effects, so it is defined by its rivers as much as its coast.

The northern half is occupied by the Appalachians, rising to Mount Carleton at 820 metres, the highest point in the province and in the Maritime Provinces, made of 400-million-year-old volcanic rock. The Saint John River, 673 kilometres long and thought to be the second-longest on the North American eastern seaboard, drains most of the west and feeds the farmland of its valley. The southeast is low-lying, mostly under 100 metres. The Bay of Fundy dominates the south: an arm of the Gulf of Maine with the highest tidal range in the world, averaging about 16 metres, where roughly 100 billion tonnes of water move in and out in a half-day cycle, twice the combined flow of all the world's rivers. The warmer, shallow Northumberland Strait on the east reaches 25°C in summer.

New Brunswick has a humid continental climate, with snowy winters and temperate summers, and winters that are slightly milder on the Gulf of St. Lawrence side than in the interior. The large sheltered interior warms more in summer than the coast, while the Bay of Fundy stays cool and often foggy even in July and August as the cold, deep, fast-moving tidal water chills the air above it. The shallow Northumberland Strait is the exception, warming to around 25°C in high summer and giving the east coast its swimming beaches.

Summer, roughly late June to early September, is warm and green, the reliable travel season. Autumn brings clear cool days and fall colour to the Appalachian north and the river valleys through late September and October. Winter, from about November to April, is cold, long and snowy, feeding cross-country skiing and snowshoeing but closing many coastal attractions. Spring is late and muddy, arriving in May. Pack layers year-round for the coast, where the fog and wind can drop a summer day sharply.

New Brunswick is about 83% forested, and that forest is the Acadian, or New England–Acadian, forest, a transition zone between the boreal forest to the north and the eastern broadleaf forest to the south, mixing spruce, fir, maple, birch and beech. It is the richest single habitat in the province, and its rivers still carry wild Atlantic salmon, including the endangered inner Bay of Fundy population monitored in Fundy National Park, which alone holds 658 species of vascular plants and more than 400 of lichens.

The coasts are the other great ecosystems. The Bay of Fundy's vast intertidal mudflats, exposed twice a day, are a globally important stopover for migrating shorebirds and a summer feeding ground for whales. Kouchibouguac National Park, on the Gulf coast, protects barrier islands, dunes, lagoons and salt marshes that shelter about 50 species listed under Canada's Species at Risk Act, including the endangered piping plover and the second-largest tern colony in North America, and was made a Dark-Sky preserve in 2009. Two national parks, Mount Carleton Provincial Park and a network of provincial parks and protected rivers make up the conservation estate.

The Acadian forest is moose, white-tailed deer and black bear country, with beaver, red fox, snowshoe hare and coyote common; Fundy National Park alone records 38 species of mammals. The rivers hold wild Atlantic salmon, and the province's brooks and lakes are trout and smallmouth-bass fishing water.

The wildlife that draws visitors, though, is marine. The Bay of Fundy is a summer feeding ground for whales, including the North Atlantic right whale, one of the most endangered whales on earth with only about 356 individuals left; whale-watching boats from Grand Manan and St. Andrews also see humpback, minke and finback whales and harbour porpoise. Harbour and grey seals haul out on the dunes of Kouchibouguac, and the Fundy mudflats fill with hundreds of thousands of semipalmated sandpipers and other shorebirds on their southward migration in July and August. The right whale's decline, driven by ship strikes and fishing-gear entanglement, has reshaped shipping lanes and fishing rules across the bay.