COWLEY, Alta. – Dave Sauchyn is becoming lord of the rings in southwestern Alberta.
Working with a team of researchers, Sauchyn examines the growth rings of old trees to record historical weather patterns in the eastern slopes region of the Rocky Mountains. The rings reveal that this is an area of regular and long-term droughts.
“The 20th century was actually the best time to live in Alberta if you used water,” the director of the Prairie Adaptation Research Collaborative at the University of Regina said during the March 6 meeting of the Livingstone Landowners Association.
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It is a group of local citizens concerned about the watershed and the effects of industrial development and global warming on the environment.
“We are stuck between a drier climate of the past and a drier climate of the future.”
His work with tree rings has taken him throughout the Prairies, Montana, Northwest Territories and the Yukon.
Sauchyn examines tree rings by withdrawing a core sample slightly bigger around than a pencil. In dry years the rings are narrow while in wet years they are wider because the trees grow more.
He said the Porcupine Hills south of Calgary is the best place in Canada to find old trees growing in a dry climate. It is also an important ecological area because major rivers originate in the Rocky Mountains and flow through the region on the way to Saskatchewan, Manitoba and eventually Hudson’s Bay.
The Milk River flows into Montana and eventually links with the Missouri River.
Core samples taken from glaciers and lake bottoms also indicate serious drought in past centuries, as do aboriginal oral history and fur trading documents that refer to extreme drought. In 1790 the North Saskatchewan River was dry and traders could not move to the area.
Weather pattern records begin with European settlement in the 1880s.
The natural record of the rings reveals that drought occurred nearly every year from 1680-1720 and 1780-1820. Only five wet years are found between 1840-80.
Alberta was settled during a wet period even though in 1860 explorer John Palliser told the federal government that 80,000 sq. miles of the Prairies were not fit for habitation or agriculture.
Further north, Sauchyn found a 650-year-old Douglas Fir tree near Calgary where conditions were better, but serious droughts were still not uncommon.
He said farmers in the area may have to look at other crops and adapt to warmer, drier climates.
For example, northern Chile is extremely dry and has developed a major grape and wine industry to cope with the weather.
“We have to think in terms of land uses that are more suitable for a drier climate,” he said.
