The ecoregion includes most of the southern Canadian Shield in Ontario and Quebec north and west of the Saint Lawrence River lowlands.

Areas in Central Ontario include Muskoka, Parry Sound, Algonquin Park, and Haliburton.

The region has a humid continental climate (Dfb) consisting of warm summers and cold, snowy winters, and is warmer towards the south.

[3] Lowland conifer forests occur on flats, low ridges, and knolls near bodies of water.

Sugar maple (Acer saccharum), American beech (Fagus grandifolia), and yellow birch are the predominant tree species.

Red spruce and eastern hemlock, together with sugar maple, yellow birch, and American beech are the dominant species, with scattered white pine.

Herbaceous plants include wood sorrel, bunchberry, yellow clintonia, and spinulose woodfern (Dryopteris carthusiana).

They include gold-colored deer's hair (Trichophorum cespitosum), alpine bilberry (Vaccinium uliginosum), lapland rosebay (Rhododendron lapponicum), bearberry willow (Salix uva-ursi), mountain sandwort (Minuartia groenlandica), and alpine holygrass (Hierochloe alpina).

[3] Old-growth forest such as the pinewoods found in this ecoregion are home to a complex variety of long-established wildlife including many invertebrates and reptiles and birds such as American black duck (Anas rubripes), wood duck (Aix sponsa), hooded merganser (Lophodytes cucullatus), and pileated woodpecker (Dryocopus pileatus).

Mammals found here include the moose (Alces alces), American black bear (Ursus americanus), Canada lynx (Lynx canadensis), snowshoe hare (Lepus americanus), eastern wolf (Canis lycaon), coyote (Canis latrans), North American porcupine (Erethizon dorsatum), and white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus).