Abstract
In August 2011, the Australian Climate Commission confirmed earlier findings that since the 1970s the southwest of Western Australia has experienced a decline of winter rainfall. This drying trend has posed significant challenges to the management of urban and rural water supplies, as well as farmland, because of the region’s Mediterranean climate of wet winters and long, dry summers. For the state’s wheat belt, which lies within this region, the persistence of drier winters has contributed to the growing suite of environmental and socioeconomic difficulties facing farmers and rural towns. One of the causes of this decline in winter rains is the shift of rain-bearing fronts toward the southwest coast. The eastern fringe of the wheat belt, therefore, has experienced some of the more acute consequences of this drying trend such as a shorter growing season and a decline in wheat yields.1 The scientific association of this drying trend with anthropogenic climate change suggests that these drier conditions will persist well into the twenty-first century.
I thank the editors for their patience and assistance in the preparation of this chapter, and the anonymous reviewers for their insightful feedback. Special thanks to Professor Andrea Gaynor for her support during the conduct of this research as a doctoral student at The University of Western Australia.
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Notes
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© 2014 James Beattie, Emily O’Gorman, and Matthew Henry
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Morgan, R.A. (2014). Farming on the Fringe: Agriculture and Climate Variability in the Western Australian Wheat Belt, 1890s to 1980s. In: Beattie, J., O’Gorman, E., Henry, M. (eds) Climate, Science, and Colonization. Palgrave Studies in the History of Science and Technology. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137333933_9
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