Drought and institutional adaptation in Alberta and Saskatchewan, 1914-1939 Gregory P. Marchildon, Suren Kulshreshtha, Elaine Wheaton, and Dave Sauchyn Originally Submitted, 7 November 2006 Final Revision, 30 March 2007 _________________________________ G.P. Marchildon (Corresponding author) Graduate School of Public Policy, University of Regina, 110 – 2 Research Drive, Regina, SK, Canada, S4S 0A2 Phone: 306-585-5464 Fax: 306-585-5461 E-mail:
[email protected] S.N. Kulshreshtha Department of Agricultural Economics, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, SK, Canada, S7N 5A8 E. Wheaton Senior Research Scientist, Saskatchewan Research Council, Saskatoon, SK, S7N 2X8 D.J. Sauchyn Earth Science Research Coordinator, Prairie Adaptation Research Consortium Regina, SK, S4S 7J7 1. Introduction and aims During the past one hundred years, at least 40 droughts have occurred in the Canadian Prairie Provinces. In the Great Plains of Alberta and Saskatchewan (and the southwestern corner of the province of Manitoba), extensive, multi-year droughts were observed in the1930s, 1980s and early 21st century. While the prolonged drought of the 1930s is one of the more significant of this series, intense, large-area and multi-year droughts still occur, producing severe hardship, even to those regions accustomed to coping with droughts (O’Brien, 1994; Wheaton, 2000; Wheaton et al., 2005). The drought of 2001 and 2002 is an example of such a recent event. This drought covered much of Canada and may be one of the first cost to coast droughts on record. As in past droughts, the provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan were hardest hit by meteorological drought resulting in adverse economic impacts.