| There has been a growing awareness of the need to protect and properly manage Canadian water resources, particularly given supply and demand conditions that could exist under a changing climate. In Canada, growing dependence on water resources in the Prairie Provinces has resulted in increasing vulnerability to hydrological drought, yet short instrumental records limit the identification and assessment of hydrological variability. Proxy records can provide valuable information by extending the historical record.;Fourteen new moisture sensitive tree-ring chronologies were developed in the South Saskatchewan River Basin (SSRB). Tree-ring chronologies were used to compute robust reconstructions of annual streamflow in the major sub-basins of the SSRB, and for the South Saskatchewan River at the Alberta-Saskatchewan border. Significant relationships were identified between tree-ring index chronologies and streamflow data. Multiple linear regression techniques were used to reconstruct streamflow as far back as 1402, considerably longer than the instrumental record, which begins in 1912. The level of uncertainty for each reconstruction was assessed, and results were compared to other paleohydrologic reconstructions from western North America.;Extensive periods of below average flow were identified in the 1650's, early 1700's, 1750's to early 1760's, 1800's, 1860's to early 1870's, 1930's, 1980's and 2000 to 2001. Periods of critical hydrological drought, as defined by the lowest 0.1 quantile, were identified over each of the reconstruction records, where the interval 1717-21 represented some of the lowest flows in the long-term streamflow record. |
