Protecting Albertans from drought and floods

Mar 05, 2024

Alberta is no stranger to emergencies. In recent years, many parts of the province have experienced flooding while many others have seen water shortages and are at risk of severe drought this year. Developing the local infrastructure needed to protect residents from these extreme weather events is expensive for communities.

If Budget 2024 passes, $125 million would be invested over the next five years for Alberta’s new Drought and Flood Protection Program. This program is designed to help vulnerable municipalities and Indigenous communities across the province develop the long-term infrastructure needed to improve their drought and flood resilience and adapt to severe weather.

“Droughts and floods can devastate public infrastructure and private property, disrupt our economy, damage the environment and put lives at risk. The new Drought and Flood Protection Program would help communities across the province build the practical infrastructure they need to help protect people’s homes and keep businesses going, regardless of the weather.”

Rebecca Schulz, Minister of Environment and Protected Areas

“Budget 2024 makes strategic investments to promote the sustainable growth of our province. Investments in wildfire preparedness, as well as water management and infrastructure, will help enhance our readiness for natural disasters to protect Albertans’ lives and livelihoods.”

Nate Horner, Minister of Finance and President of Treasury Board
The Drought and Flood Protection Program would help fund the design and construction of projects that protect critical infrastructure from flooding and drought and help to protect public safety. This could include projects to relocate or drought-proof critical infrastructure, improve drainage or water retention ponds, and stabilize riverbanks or construct flood barriers. The program would be application-based and municipalities, improvement districts, special areas, Metis Settlements and First Nations would all be eligible to apply.

“As rural municipalities manage over 85 per cent of Alberta’s land mass, including many areas that historically face drought and flood risks, many have prioritized increased flood and drought monitoring, resilience and mitigation projects. Because Alberta faces a hotter and drier future with increased occurrences of major storms, provincial support for local rural resiliency projects will become a more and more important investment in protecting rural communities, residents and industries. RMA is pleased with the introduction of the Drought and Flood Protection Program, and we look forward to seeing the innovative ways that the funding would be put to use by rural municipalities to lessen impacts of drought and flood events.”

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Video: Seeing the Whole Season: How Continuous Crop Modeling Is Changing Breeding

Plant breeding has long been shaped by snapshots. A walk through a plot. A single set of notes. A yield check at the end of the season. But crops do not grow in moments. They change every day.

In this conversation, Gary Nijak of AerialPLOT explains how continuous crop modeling is changing the way breeders see, measure, and select plants by capturing growth, stress, and recovery across the entire season, not just at isolated points in time.

Nijak breaks down why point-in-time observations can miss critical performance signals, how repeated, season-long data collection removes the human bottleneck in breeding, and what becomes possible when every plot is treated as a living data set. He also explores how continuous modeling allows breeding programs to move beyond vague descriptors and toward measurable, repeatable insights that connect directly to on-farm outcomes.

This conversation explores:

• What continuous crop modeling is and how it works

• Why traditional field observations fall short over a full growing season

• How scale and repeated measurement change breeding decisions

• What “digital twins” of plots mean for selection and performance

• Why data, not hardware, is driving the next shift in breeding innovation As data-driven breeding moves from research into real-world programs, this discussion offers a clear look at how seeing the whole season is reshaping value for breeders, seed companies, and farmers, and why this may be only the beginning.