Farmers have a long history of adapting to new conditions and should be able to do the same as the climate changes, a scientist told a forum hosted by Saskatchewan premier Lorne Calvert in Regina last month.
Dave Sauchyn, research co-ordinator for the Prairie Adaptation Research Collaborative, said some of the best examples of adaptation can be found in agricultural practices such as minimum tillage and shelterbelts.
Adapting to future climate conditions means finding ways to deal with warmer temperatures and less water, he said.
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Climate models project major ecosystem shifts by 2050 and significantly less surface and soil water. There will be more precipitation in fall and winter but much of it will be unavailable as it evaporates in hot dry summers.
Sauchyn also said there will be greater variations from season to season and year to year as drought and unusually wet years occur more frequently and severely.
“The future climate will include events that we have not experienced,” Sauchyn told the forum on climate change and adaptation.
“For the last half of the 20th century we’ve been operating with a myth of abundance, and we’ve been assuming that the hydrological regime is stationary and will continue to be stationary in the future.”
Studies predict 8.5 percent less water in Lake Diefenbaker, the major source of drinking water for Saskatchewan cities and an important irrigation source for farmers.
Sauchyn said there were droughts between the 1840s and 1860s that were worse than those the province has experienced since European settlers arrived. These were the conditions when John Palliser observed that southwestern Saskatchewan and southeastern Alberta were too dry to sustain farming and settlers. But right after that, there were some wet years and the area was settled anyway.
Sauchyn also noted that Saskatchewan’s population was established during the first 20 years of the last century, when moisture conditions were good. Historical data taken from lake sediment shows centuries when lakes were dry and saline and other centuries when they were wet and fresh.
“There can be dramatic and sustained shifts in the climate,” he said. “Can you imagine, over the next two decades, 17 years of drought?”
He told reporters that it is government’s responsibility to implement policies and programs that will deal with climate change.
“We actually have an abundance of natural capital, natural resources, information skills, technology, institutions,” he said. “We have all the tools to deal with climate change. We only need a co-ordinated effort.”
He said a strong agricultural industry is still possible. It will be hotter, the growing season will be longer and water is going to be a limitation.
“(Adaptation) may involve shifting agriculture from certain parts of the province to other parts where water’s more abundant and it might involve a different mix of crops, but there’s no reason that agriculture can’t thrive given more heat and more carbon dioxide which, of course, plants use.”
Other historical data Sauchyn presented included temperature reconstruction showing the planet went through a warm period about 1,000 years ago.
The years just before and after 1600 were the coolest, when the glaciers expanded during the period known as the Little Ice Age. The glaciers have been retreating ever since.
Last year was one of the warmest years on record.
