The Mackenzie River is the world’s 10th largest river. It is sometimes called the Amazon of the north. The Mackenzie starts at Great Slave Lake and meanders north and west for 1,060 miles to the Mackenzie Delta at Inuvik. This north flowing river transports one fifth of Canada’s fresh water and drains into an area twice the size of Ontario.

The Mackenzie River System includes three major lake, the Great Slave, the Great Bear, and the Athabasca. It also includes numerous major rivers, the Peace, Athabasca, Liard, Hay, Peel, South Nahanni and Slave rivers.  The illustration below, from the University of Guelph,  provides the reader an idea of the canadian river systems that feed into the Mackenzie.


It spans four physiographic regions: Western Cordillera, Interior Plain, Precambrian Shield and Arctic Coastal Plain. It is too wide to bridge; it is almost 4 miles wide in some spots. Ferries are used to transport vehicles across the river It gathers the water of a hundred mountain rivers.
Mackenzie River Basin .

The region of the Mackenzie Valley is unique. The southern end of the Mackenzie Valley begins in Western Alberta. This region in part of the Boreal forest region. In fact this area is known as dry continental boreal forest. The Boreal region relatively ends toward the middle of valley as one proceeds northward. Yet, along the path of the Mackenzie River, the Boreal Forest extends the farthest into the north. Please refer to the figure on the left (3c marking the Boreal forest). The Dry continental boreal region becomes surrounded by the sub-arctic, which marks the permafrost region of the world. The sub-arctic has an ice-rich landscape underlain by thick disconnected quartinary sediments (Area 2 in figure). The Mackenzie  Valley extends all the way to the north, where the river forms a delta in the arctic region of Northwest Territories. The Arctic region is characteristic of a very ice rich permafrost soil.