Take a Tour of the World's Largest Intact Forest, Canada's Boreal, in Google Earth

Google Earth is a great tool in itself, but where it really shines is in enabling others to build on it, to create custom maps, add new data or create visual tours.

The Pew Environment Group has made use of this feature to showcase the boreal forest of Canada, the largest intact forest in the world, which is under threat of not remaining so 'intact' for long.

"Canada’s boreal forest is increasingly affected by large-scale industrial activities. A rapidly expanding footprint of development already includes 180 million acres (728,000 km²) affected by forestry, road building, mining, oil and gas extraction, and hydropower," Pew explained.

You can check out the tour, which was unveiled at the launch of the Google Earth Canada Outreach, for yourself in Google Earth by grabbing this KML file. Or you can just watch the video above.