In recent years, the Prairies have seen bigger swings in climate conditions — very wet years followed by very dry ones. That makes an already unpredictable landscape even harder to forecast, with real consequences for flood preparedness and water quality.
The challenge is the landscape itself. Much of the Canadian Prairies sit within the Prairie Pothole Region, a landscape dotted with millions of shallow wetlands and depressions. Water doesn’t simply run downhill into a stream, it is stored first. Then, once enough wetlands fill, water begins to spill from one to the next, and only after that does it connect into channels.
