Saskatoon Star Phoenix, June 2006;
On June 5, the United Nations Environment Programme announced a study that shows the world’s desert and arid regions are at risk of becoming even more parched. Research at the University of Saskatchewan supports this, showing the Canadian Prairies could be drying out due to more moderate winters.
Disappearing wetland, December 2009
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Disappearing wetland, October 2014.
Check back in another five. I’ll take some shots from the new bridge.
From the comments;
I remember when Dr. John Pomeroy [Director for Hydrology, UofS] arrived to much fanfare, one of his first pronouncements was that the Saskatchewan water table was so low that it would take decades to ever recover to “normal” levels. And, of course, because of Global Warming [as it was then known] such recovery was impossible.
Anybody wondering, besides myself, how the fence posts in the first pictures were put into the ground in the first place if there was 4′ of water in that slough since Adam and Eve cuddled in the jungles.
The last three photos could have been taken in our area north of Saskatoon. A small lake once again almost covers a road that is closed once again. This road has been built up about three times from the original prairie trail. Until the 1960s it was once the main road from Saskatoon to Prince Albert. Everywhere there are slews with forty year old dead trees around them.
Someone should contact the good professor and take the brainwashed imbecile out of his ivory tower office and take him on a tour of Saskatchewan.
I’ve always found Geography departments at Universities to be dumping grounds for greens looking for cash from “research” aimed at reinforcing green hypotheses from fringe disciplines concocted to raise enrollment numbers. Shutting them all down would constitute no scientific loss whatsoever.
Yea, but I think I see some man made ebola swimming in that pond!
This spring I had a pond six feet deep in the back yard. After the hockey rink melted we went boating on it.
Since August up to a couple weeks ago I was cutting the grass in the bottom of the dry, cracked spot where the pond had been. My lawn gets bigger and bigger and bigger all summer long.
Today after a couple of brisk rains, the pond is about a foot deep.
Looking forwards to more boating next spring.
This drainage issue is classified as a “wetland” by the government, even though what what’s actually going on is crappy ditch maintenance by the county and the railroad. If they fixed the ditches the pond would vanish as soon as the ice melts every spring.
So much for the “war on mosquitoes”.
I remember when Dr. John Pomeroy [Director for Hydrology, UofS] arrived to much fanfare, one of his first pronouncements was that the Saskatchewan water table was so low that it would take decades to ever recover to “normal” levels. And, of course, because of Global Warming [as it was then known] such recovery was impossible. Two years later your fenceposts were again under water. Why are these guys never called on their failed doom-saying?
What’s the stuff hanging on the barbed wire?
After the 2010 monsoons in Central Saskatchewan, huge portions of prime farmland were turned into cattail bogs. Some are receding, but it’ll take years to reclaim and return them to full productivity.
Bad enough these jokers can spout off. Worst thing is they get paid big bucks to do so!
Of course, in the US, the biggest destroyer of wetlands is the government’s insane scheme to subsidize corn-based ethanol, which has seen thousands of acres of wetlands plowed under in order to boost subsidy sucking by this “green” B.S. Elsewhere, see the destruction of orangutan habitat to make room for palm oil plantations, also to make :green” bio fuel (warning: some of the videos showing this arte replete with heartbreaking pictures of dead orangs.
Seaweed.
What were once known as the three Shoal Lakes north of Winnipeg are now just one big lake and have submerged hundreds of acres of pasture & haying land.
If you want to know the health of the prairie climate/environment watch the waterfowl numbers – they rely on the potholes and wet summers – the forecast is very good this year.
Ducks – 1 , Climate asshats – 0
http://www.ducks.org/hunting/migration/2014-waterfowl-forecast?poe=huntmenuvertical
These photos look normal to me – for the Spring runoff! I am judging by prairie land outside Edmonton (Namao AFB) back in the 1950s.
lotsa wetland in SE Sask this past July.
enuf to close the TC Hwy, 5′ under water
Listening to the news in B.C. today and the government announced that the players in our yet unstarted gas industry may be subject to paying carbon offsets. I thought that scam died 10 years ago. Oh well so much for the gas powered new economy in B.C. If I were a player I would head for the hills. I thought our government was smarter than this.
They are Liberals.
yeah right…
We use the same water as Jesus Christ washed his feet with. Where and when it falls and where it stays is dependent on thousands of variables. It gets recycled over and over again. I’m 65 years old, the sloughs (AKA wetlands) are exactly in the same spot as they were when I was five years old.
If you’ve ever lost 500 acres of 40 bushel durum to the ducks and geese, trust me when I tell you that you don’t cherish wetlands.
HEEEE, Heee, heeeeeeeeeeee…………..
You cold have told him the truth…dried palm leaves.