Welcome to our Prairie Drought Migration research website!

It is increasingly feared that climate change will become a significant driver of human migration in many parts of the world. While most experts agree that climatic conditions can and do affect migration patterns, there is considerable need for more research in this field. Much can be learned from studying how households and communities have previously adapted to extreme climatic conditions. During the 1930s, many hundreds of thousands of people migrated out of drought-stricken areas on North America’s Great Plains. The goal of this research project is to study how social, economic and cultural factors affected household adaptation in Canada’s Prairie provinces during those droughts. In particular, we want to understand what distinguishes households that migrated out of the drought areas from those that stayed behind, and the implications their migration had for the areas they moved to and the communities they left behind.

While the 1930s may seem like a long time ago, many Prairie communities today face challenges similar to those of the 1930s. Drought and extended periods of extreme heat occur regularly in western Canada, and are projected to become more frequent in the future. Many of the institutional policies and programs that government brought in to support struggling Depression-era communities have been allowed to erode. Agricultural producers and the communities linked to them are operating on increasingly thin margins due to external pressures such as low commodity prices, border closures due to BSE and the current financial crisis. Climate change will only add to the pressure on today’s Prairie communities.

This research project has several components, which will last into 2011. Research team members working in the uOttawa Laboratory for Applied Geomatic and Geographic Systems (LAGGISS) are creating a GIS model of the Prairies that integrates historical climate and population data. The model allows researchers to identify “hot spots” where households migrated out of areas hit by extreme drought conditions. Researchers then travel to selected hotspots to interview eyewitnesses and record their observations on the migrations they witnessed, and the factors that distinguished migrants from non-migrants. The results will develop new theories on the relationship between climate and migration, along with new methods and concepts that may be transferable to investigations of climate-related migration in other regions and other time periods. Most of all, we hope to be able to identify those factors that make rural households and communities vulnerable to climate change, how such vulnerability may lead to migration, and understand adaptation needs so that rural communities can better adapt to future climate change.

We hope you will take a tour of this site, and check back in on us again from time to time. As the project progresses, we will be adding new material and resources.