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by Noseshine 3640 days ago
Is it really uninhabitable? The territories in the north maybe too harsh, but with global warming helping too I think the southern half is quite alright, which is huge. It's all forest, lots of lakes, no lack of water and not too high, and no desert.
2 comments
Retric 3640 days ago
On the western half:

The 'low' areas have minimal rainfall and are 1KM over sea level. http://www.chinamaps.org/china/china-map-of-precipitation-an...

The high areas get a little more rainfall, but are mostly 4-5+km over sea level. http://www.china-food-security.org/data/maps/dem/dem_h.htm

Combine them and you can see why the population map looks the way it does. http://www.china-mike.com/china-travel-tips/tourist-maps/chi...

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Noseshine 3640 days ago
Uhm... Canada, not China. I responded to the comment that said

    > You could probably do the same in Canada fwiw.
I would not ask about China, I've seen enough documentaries about their deserts and high plateaus. Some of them about the silk road, which was not an easy one because of that geography.
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soundwave106 3640 days ago
From what I see, there's a pretty good correlation between the population density map (https://www.britannica.com/place/Canada/images-videos/Popula...) and the portion of Canada at least sporadically covered by permafrost. (http://www.enr.gov.nt.ca/state-environment/13-permafrost)

In addition to the rather obvious climate this implies (eg, rather cold), from what I understand, building anything on permafrost is very challenging.

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soperj 3640 days ago
"sporadically covered by permafrost" - I think you're confused as to the permanency of permafrost.
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cmrdporcupine 3640 days ago
It's no more uninhabitable than the uninhabitable areas of China. But it is non-arable.

Most of the eastern half of Canada north of a certain is "Canadian shield" and is granite shield rock with little if any topsoil.

The other half is boreal forest and some of it is indeed farmed to a fairly high latittude (central Alberta where I'm from) but once you get up high enough the growing degree days are not sufficient to grow a lot of crops. It's good for grazing if that. And also fairly arid in spots.

And the rest is mountains, or arctic.

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