Queen’s University: Severe Drought Could Threaten Major Watersheds

Published on: 2012/07/06 - in Featured Science & Tech

Recent results from researchers by Queen’s University reveals that severe droughts could affect one of the country’s major watersheds. The study focused on changes in the water levels of the Winnipeg River Drainage Basin (PDF map), and concluded that future droughts could be more threatening  than any others in recorded history.

Lead researcher Kathleen Laird (Biology) used a new technique to reconstruct previous water level changes in a network of lakes over the past 2,000 years.

Laird says that “it was a very telling study, and very important. Although water levels are now at an all-time high, our reconstructions show that during a past period of warmth 1000 to 800 years ago (a period commonly referred to as the Medieval Warm Period), there was a megadrought that lowered lake levels in all of our study sites.”

The famous “dust bowl” drought of the 1930s is the barmometer currently being used to define a significant and severe drought that would affect hydropower generation.

The Winnipeg River Drainage Basin is an important water resource for Manitoba Hydro (its Pine Falls Generating Station pictured above) and occupies a large part of northwestern Ontario. In the event of a severe drought, power generation would be dramatically reduced and lead to a loss of hundreds of millions of dollars to utilities. That potential loss is what prompted them to finance the Queen’s University led research on historic changes in water levels.

“We are rolling the dice with climate change,” says Brian Cumming, Biology and Environmental Studies at Queen’s. “We do know that based on this data, the drought in the 1930s was not as extreme as compared to what has happened in the past, and consequently could occur again in the future. We could be headed for big changes.”

The Queen’s team is funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and Manitoba Hydro, and also includes biology master’s students Melanie Kingsbury, Susan Ma and Heather Haig.

The study will continue to observe the climate sensitivity of the Winnipeg River Drainage Basin, as it affects water levels as well as any links between droughts and forest fires.

Their research is to be featured in an upcoming edition of Global Change Biology.

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Photo: Manitoba Hydro Pine Falls generating station: Wikimedia Commons