Researchers at the University of Saskatchewan say results from several years of analysis indicate the draining of wetlands can actually lead to more severe flooding.
That is the conclusion reached after years of river measurements and computer modeling done by the U of S Centre for Hydrology.
Professor John Pomeroy headed up the project and says wetlands act as a buffer zone for spring flooding, which has been increasing over the past 50 years.
“Then we found that the wetland rainage had also contributed to the flooding and we had some air photos from 1958 and compared them to the current observations and we found that if the basin had been left as it was in 1958, the flood peak would have been much smaller than the flood of 2011,” he says.
Pomeroy says his research also has a practical application in more northerly parts of Manitoba and Saskatchewan.
“We have to be careful in the southern parks of the north where agriculture is starting to encroach and draining some of the swamps and muskeg can have similar impact to rain in the wetlands. So, we have to watch that when there’s flooding activities going on or where people are tempted to drain those areas and turn them into farmland. This is on the southern edge of the boreal forest.”
Pomeroy says agriculture activities also lead to an increase in nutrients in rivers, which is leading to problems with green algae in many lakes.