| | When you ask Dr. Norman Henderson what are the main challenges that climate change presents for the three Prairie Provinces, he says, “That’s really difficult to answer because it affects just about everyone and everything that they do.”
Henderson is the Executive Director and a Senior Research Associate with the Prairie Adaptation Research Collaborative (PARC). He says, “Next to northern Canada, the Prairie Provinces are expected to have the most noticeable climate change impacts in all of Canada.” He lists an array of effects in “a world of change” – from taxi drivers losing business in mild winters, to stresses on communities that depend on ice roads, to lower water levels resulting in less hydro power and in rising prices for other energy sources.
He stresses that the Prairie Provinces are already seeing climate change impacts like drier conditions and more forest fires. “People tend to think about climate change as an oncoming problem, as a train in the distance that’s coming at us, but that’s not the case. It’s happening right now. It’s not just something that will happen, it’s something that has been happening.”
PARC conducts and disseminates research on climate change impacts and adaptation options in the three Prairie Provinces. It carries out this mandate by funding research, holding workshops and conferences, co-funding three research professors (one in each of the three provinces), and fostering the development of new researchers. PARC also hosts C CIARN Prairies, one of the six regional nodes in the national Canadian Climate Impacts and Adaptation Research Network.
Created in 2000, PARC has been involved in dozens of research projects in such diverse sectors as agriculture, water, forestry, biodiversity, socio-economics, earth sciences, energy and policy. Examples of its agricultural research include: evaluating climate change impacts and adaptation strategies related to forage and livestock production; and assessing climate change effects on herbicide effectiveness and weed/crop competition.
PARC’s current research priorities are forestry and water resources. Henderson explains, “We made that decision a couple of years ago because forest impacts and water impacts were likely to be the most severe and key impacts in the Prairie Provinces, and also they were areas where there wasn’t necessarily a lot of prior research.”
As well, both sectors depend on multi-year decisions, making it more crucial to have reliable predictions. He says, “For example, if you build a dam, you expect to operate that over the coming decades. And when you choose to replant an area with a particular species of trees you are expecting those trees to be there in 30 or 40 years. So they make a commitment, based on a best guess of what the future will look like.”
PARC is a federal-provincial partnership, with Natural Resources Canada, Alberta Environment, Saskatchewan Industry and Resources, and Manitoba Conservation providing annual funding. PARC also partners with a variety of agencies on specific projects. For more information, visit http://www.parc.ca and http://prairies.c-ciarn.ca.
Climate projections for the Prairies
- Temperature: increasing, with greater increases in night temperatures and winter temperatures
- Precipitation: possibly slightly increasing, but not enough to keep pace with temperature increases
- Evaporation: significantly increasing
- Soil moisture: decreasing
- Growing season: longer
- Water resources: increasing variability, earlier peak flows
- Extreme events: increased frequency and magnitude of extreme events, including drought
Source: PARC website |
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