Lodgepole pine and salal community

The pine-salal community is typically vegetated by tall pine trees, salal shrub undergrowth. Sphagnum is sparse. This community does not occur in the centre of the Bog because of the extreme environmental conditions there. Salal, although also found in the Pine-Sphagnum community, grows much more abundantly here. A major difference in the landscape is the differing tree heights. Pine trees are much taller here compared to the Pine-Sphagnum community. This increases the canopy cover of the area and it is therefore more shaded here. In theory, Sphagnum moss does not grow as abundantly here due to competition from faster-growing salal and other plants. However, that is not necessarily the case. Past peat extraction operations did not affect areas of the Pine-salal region (assumably because of its lower Sphagnum coverage originally). As a result, Sphagnum coverage is often quite a bit higher here than in the Pine-Sphagnum region.