Prairie droughts need to be analyzed more thoroughly to help lessen their impacts on producers and communities, researchers told a recent Saskatoon conference on climate change and water on the Prairies.
Elaine Wheaton, a climatologist with the Saskatchewan Research Council in Saskatoon, said Canada should have been better prepared to deal with recent droughts.
“We should have increased our technology and information,” she said.
A study of droughts occurring around 1919, 1924, 1930 and 2002 can show the increased potential for “evapotranspiration,” rising temperatures, lengthened growing seasons, ice free periods, water availability and weather extremes.
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“We have to see how vulnerable we are now to help determine how vulnerable we are in the future,” she said.
The prolonged 2001-02 drought left dugouts dry, water levels low and pastures poor.
Research needs to look at improving the understanding of drought characteristics, providing ideas for adapting and issuing early warning for droughts.
She noted how those in the southern Prairies weathered dry periods better than those in the north, where droughts are more rare.
“If we are prepared, the risk and the damage is less,” she said, citing the need for greater outreach work involving farmers and communities.
“We need researchers working in a co-ordinated way on drought,” she said.
Adaptive measures can help but don’t eliminate the damages, she noted.
Losses in agricultural production during the last drought to hit Saskatchewan and Alberta were estimated at $4 billion.
Garth van der Kamp of the National Water Research Institute in Saskatoon said there are many unknowns associated with climate change. He advised farmers to be flexible and prepare for both floods and droughts.
“Dry periods happen regularly. That’s the normal cycle; be prepared for them,” he said.
“It’s hard to be sure,” he said. “We’ll keep measuring and eventually see the patterns.”
Farmers are doing a more efficient job of retaining water in their fields than ever before through continuous cropping practices. It has allowed for the infiltration of moisture throughout a field.
However, that also means less runoff to fill sloughs for wildlife.
Van der Kamp believes there are ways to achieve a balance between the interests of wildlife and farmers.
He felt hilly and unproductive areas would be better used as grasslands, providing grazing for livestock but also providing nesting cover for birds.
He suggested maintaining rings of trees and shrubs around sloughs and minimizing cultivation activity in the grasses to slow the spread of weeds.
“It keeps the land in production, keeps the soil compacted, the grass mowed and keeps the water in,” he said.
A study on a tract of land at St. Denis, Sask., which was converted to bromegrass from cultivated acres for waterfowl in the 1980s, showed the drawbacks of taking land completely out of agricultural production.
By the fall of 1997, the smaller sloughs had dried out.
“Once they went to dense grass, there was no more runoff,” he said.
