spring 2011 drought scape

7/31/2019 Spring 2011 Drought Scape

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Spring 2011

2011 National Drought Mitigation Center

Forecasters Say Dryness in TX and SW to Continue

The likelihood of drought continuing to spread and intensifyover the southern U.S. is high. More seasonal precipitation

may bring relief to Florida and the Southeast.page 2

Register Now

... for Building a SustainableNetwork of Drought Com-munities 2011, June 8-9 inChicago.

page 13

Drought Planning, TheGame: Coming Soon

Our neighbors to the northrecently pioneered a new

approach to scenario plan-ning for drought. Mike Hayesserved as a referee for therst-ever Canadian DroughtInvitational Tournament.

page 8

Ding Takes New Post

Ya Ding, an agriculturaleconomist who has been a

post-doctoral researcher atthe NDMC since 2006, will re-turn to China in June, havingcovered new ground at theintersection of climatology,agriculture and economics.

page 10

Widhalm Heads for Purdue

Melissa Widhalm, climatolo-gist and program coordinator,will leave in May to oversee a

climate project at Purdue.page 12

About DroughtScapeDroughtScape is the quar-terly electronic newsletter ofthe National Drought Miti-gation Center. We welcomeyour contributions. Editorsemail: [email protected].

Drought Monitor Authors Review Enhanced GIS

Tools and New Processes

Automation promises to free up U.S. Drought Monitor authorsfrom detailed manual work, leaving more time for ne-scalespatial decisions. Groups that produce unied state and re-gional recommendations are also becoming more widespread.

page 6

South and Southwest Lose Crops, Fight Fires

Drought hit winter wheat crops hard across Texas and muchof the South in the rst quarter of 2011, and the wildre sea-son was off to an active start.

page 4

The WMO in March published proceedings of an expert meet-ing on Agricultural Drought Indices. page 3
mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]


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Spring 2011


Spring 2011 Outlook and January to March Summary

By Brian Fuchs, Climatologist, National Drought Mitigation Center

Drought classications are based on the U.S. Drought Monitor. For a detailed explanation,please visit http://drought.unl.edu/dm/classify.htm. Details on the extent and severity ofdrought are on-line at http://drought.unl.edu/dm/archive.html. The outlook integrates existingconditions with forecasts from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrations ClimatePrediction Center: http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/.

Outlook: As the inuence of a very strong La Nia event continues through this spring, the

likelihood of drought continuing to affect the southern United States appears high. Drought isexpected to persist across the South, Southern Plains and Southwest. As the La Nia wanesduring the late spring and early summer, more seasonal precipitation will be possible indrought regions, which is important as we move into a climatologically wetter time of year.

January: The year started with muchof the northern half of the UnitedStates drought-free, while droughtwas developing and spreading overthe southern tier. January brought wellabove normal precipitation throughmuch of the northern Plains, parts

of Texas and much of Florida. Theserains in Texas and Florida helped easedrought concerns. Temperatures were8-10 degrees Fahrenheit below normalin the northern Plains and 6-8 degreesFahrenheit above normal in west Texasand New Mexico. By the end of Janu-ary, 25.9 percent of the United Stateswas abnormally dry or in drought,compared to 36.6 percent at the begin-ning of the month. Drought eased during the month, with only 7.51 percent of the country indrought at the end of January, compared with 18.23 percent at the beginning of the month.

February: February was very dry across the southern United States, with many areas record-ing less than 50 percent of normal precipitation for the month. South Texas, west Texas andsouthern Florida recorded less than 25 percent of normal. Due to the time of year, these dryregions recorded decits of less than 4 inches of precipitation for the month, so the impactof the dryness was not as severe as it would have been during a normally wetter time of theyear. Temperatures were warmest in the eastern United States, with readings 2-4 degreesFahrenheit above normal for the month, while the northern Plains and Rocky Mountains hadtemperatures that were 8-10 degrees Fahrenheit below normal. The spatial extent of drynessand drought expanded from 25.9 percent of the United States to 39.4 percent by the end ofFebruary. Areas in drought expanded from 7.51 percent to 23.64 percent of the country duringFebruary, with most of the expansion in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and Alabama.

U.S. Drought Monitor

Jan. 4, 2011
http://drought.unl.edu/dm/classify.htmhttp://drought.unl.edu/dm/archive.htmlhttp://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/http://drought.unl.edu/dm/archive.htmlhttp://drought.unl.edu/dm/classify.htm


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March: March brought a stark contrast inprecipitation across the United States, withvery wet conditions for much of California,the Pacic Northwest, New England andthe Tennessee Valley, and very dry condi-tions over the Southwest, southern Plainsand central Plains. Temperatures remained

warm over much of the United States, withthe warmest temperature departures fromnormal over west Texas and southern NewMexico and the coolest over the Dakotas andMontana. The area of drought in the UnitedStates remained nearly unchanged duringthe month, with 23 percent of the countryin drought at the beginning and end of themonth, but drought intensied, with 5.4 per-cent of the country in extreme drought, compared to 1.9 percent at the beginning of the month.

U.S. Drought Monitor

March 29

Spring 2011 Outlook and January to March Summary, continued

Proceedings of Expert Meeting on Agricultural Drought Indices Published

The World Meteorological Organization announced publication in March2011 ofAgricultural Drought Indices Proceedings of an Expert Meeting(June 2-4, 2010, in Murcia, Spain), edited by Donald A. Wilhite, DeborahA. Wood, Mannava V.K. Sivakumar and Raymond P. Motha.

The experts recommended that given the enhanced availability of andaccess to data, tools, and guidance materials, countries around theworld should move beyond the use of just rainfall data in the compu-tation of indices for the description of agricultural droughts and theirimpacts, and that countries should consider adopting a composite indexsuch as the U.S. Drought Monitor. They acknowledged the need for bet-ter data networks in many countries.

The expert meeting was a follow-up to a meeting held in Lincoln, Nebraska, in December 2009,when drought scientists from all over the world met and selected the Standardized Precipita-tion Index (SPI) for meteorological services all over the world to use in characterizing meteo-rological drought. One of the recommendations coming out of that workshop was for sepa-rate meetings to be held to come up with recommendations on agricultural and hydrologicaldrought indices.


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Drought Impacts Increase Across the Southern U.S. in Early 2011

By Denise Gutzmer, Drought Impacts Specialist

The NDMC added 379 impacts to theDrought Impact Reporter during the rstquarter of 2011. Fires exacerbated bydrought burned in states where late win-ter and spring is the re season. Texasfelt the effects of drought more than anyother state, with 96 impacts documentingdelayed planting, the lack of pasture forlivestock, failed winter wheat and wildres.From January 1 through April 11, 2011,654 wildres burned 916 square miles andconsumed 189 homes (Austin AmericanStatesman, April 12). After a dry winter,the winter wheat showed little hope for re-covery from Texas through western Kansas. New Mexico had 60 impacts reported, with morewildres and agricultural impacts this year than last. The majority of the states impacts werereported in Eddy County in southeastern New Mexico, where a dedicated group of ranchersand a few government employees regularly submitted impact reports. Florida endured its dri-est dry season in more than 80 years as wildres burned and water restrictions dictated lawn

watering schedules in south Florida. Oklahoma had 28 impacts as the winter wheat crop de-teriorated and wildres threatened many communities. Short hay supplies led some farmers tosell cattle in the southern part of the state. Most of the 19 impacts listed for North Carolinawere related to voluntary water conservation, while a smaller number concerned wildres andre danger. The North Carolina Division of Forest Resources noted that 288 res burned 2,958acres in one day, on February 19. Although drought eased in Hawaii, impacts lingered withwater restrictions on Maui and ongoing res and re restrictions on the Big Island. The dozenimpact reports for Arkansas mainly covered burn bans and agricultural issues. In Georgia,dry conditions led to re warnings, while several thousand acres burned in the southeasterncorner of the state.

California UpdateCalifornia ofcially emerged from drought at the end of March,

when Governor Brown rescinded the drought declaration thathad been in effect since June 2008, when former GovernorSchwarzenegger urged all Californians to conserve water. InFebruary 2009, Governor Schwarzenegger announced a stateof emergency and reiterated requests for water use to be cutby 20 percent because of the continuing drought. The winter of2010-2011 brought plentiful snow and boosted the snowpackin the Sierra Nevada to 165 percent of average as of April 1.Donner Summit received 740 inchesmore than 61 feetofsnow during the winter. (From the San Francisco Chronicle,March 31, 2011, and previous reports).

Photo by Justin Kauk


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Spring 2011


Representative impacts from the Drought Impact Reporter are listed below. For more informa-tion, please visit the Drought Impact Reporter at http://droughtreporter.unl.edu/

Texas

The Colorado River Municipal Water Districtasked its water customers to reduce their wa-ter use by 10 percent because its three supplylakes, Lake J.B. Thomas, E.V. Spence Reser-

voir and O.H. Ivie Reservoir were at 6, lessthan 3 and just over 30 percent, respectively.Odessa American, Feb. 7, 2011

Hard red winter wheat in western Kansas, Cimar-ron and Texas counties in Oklahoma, and farm-land west of Amarillo, Texas did not germinate orjust barely came up before winter arrived be-cause there was insufcient rainfall. Oklahoma-FarmReport.com (Okla.), March 4, 2011

Two-thirds of the counties in Texas had banson outdoor burning because much of thestate was experiencing some level of drought.

Bryan-College Station Eagle, March 18, 2011

New Mexico

Wildres had consumed more than 100,000 acres in New Mexico since the start of 2011 withdrought and winds contributing to the re danger. Santa Fe New Mexican, March 26, 2011

No rain from Feb. 1 to Feb. 28. Water wells level decreasing. Ranch pastures have no grass to sus-tain livestock. Pastures becoming dust bowls. Report from a rancher in Eddy County, New Mexico

Florida

The Army Corps of Engineers resumed releasing water from Lake Okeechobee to reduce thesalinity in the Caloosahatchee estuary and protect sea grasses and other vegetation and wild-

life. Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel& SouthFlorida.com, Feb. 10, 2011

Three to four times more wildres burned in Florida this year than in the previous two years,according to a spokesman for the Florida Division of Forestry. Since the start of the year, 1,144res had consumed more than 42,000 acres. The Miami Herald, March 4, 2011

Canals in Loxahatchee Groves in Palm Beach County were low from lack of rain. Town leadersworried about having enough water for reghting. Town-Crier(Fla.), Feb. 4, 2011

Declining groundwater levels led the South Florida Water Management District to implementemergency watering restrictions starting March 26 to stretch remaining water supplies. FortLauderdale Sun-Sentinel& SouthFlorida.com, March 22, 2011

Drought Impacts Increase Across Southern U.S. in Early 2011, continued

Old-timers in Oklahoma have been comparing current con-

ditions to those of the Dust Bowl in the 1930s. This photo

was taken by Ladene Beer in Texas County, Oklahoma.
http://droughtreporter.unl.edu/http://droughtreporter.unl.edu/


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Another development that may soon be visible to users of the Drought Monitor will be usingan S or L to specify short-term or long-term drought, instead of A for agricultural and H forhydrologic. That way its more encompassing, Miskus said. Short-term will not be strictlylimited to agriculture. In the winter in the Midwest, you may have short-term dryness with noagricultural impacts. Instead, an area in short-term drought could experience ecological orrecreational impacts.

The U.S. Drought Monitor became operational in 1999 as a partnership between federal agen-

cies and academic institutions, including the National Drought Mitigation Center at the Uni-versity of Nebraska-Lincoln, with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration andthe U.S. Department of Agriculture as the lead federal agencies. Since then the USDA and theInternal Revenue Service have started using it to allocate drought relief.

The Drought Monitor, online at http://drought.unl.edu/dm/monitor.html, is produced eachweek by a rotating team of authors and about 300 reviewers across the United States. TheMonitor is a composite index, with authors relying on many different ways of monitoringdrought to arrive at the depiction on the map, which is released every Thursday morning.The U.S. Drought Monitor Forum, held every two years, alternates with the North AmericanDrought Monitor Forum. The Forum gives the authors and stakeholders a chance to meet torene the product and the processes that go into it.

Please check the July edition ofDroughtScape for details on where the collection of 2011 U.S.Drought Monitor Forum presentations will be posted.

USDM Process, continued

National Drought Mitigation Centerhttp://drought.unl.edu/DroughtScapehttp://drought.unl.edu/droughtscape/droughtscapecurrent.htmWhats Newhttp://drought.unl.edu/new.htm

P.O. Box 830988Lincoln, NE 68583-0988USA

[email protected]: (402) 4726707fax: (402) 4722946

819 Hardin Hall3310 Holdrege St.School of Natural Resources

University of Nebraska-LincolnEast Campus

Contact the National Drought Mitigation Center
http://drought.unl.edu/dm/monitor.htmlhttp://drought.unl.edu/http://drought.unl.edu/droughtscape/droughtscapecurrent.htmhttp://drought.unl.edu/new.htmmailto:[email protected]://drought.unl.edu/new.htmhttp://drought.unl.edu/droughtscape/droughtscapecurrent.htmhttp://drought.unl.edu/mailto:[email protected]://drought.unl.edu/dm/monitor.html


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Mike Hayes, director of the NDMC, wasone of four referees at the rst-ever Ca-nadian Invitational Drought Tournament(IDT), Feb. 15-16 in Calgary, Alberta.Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC)and the Canadian Water Resources As-sociation organized the game to promotedrought risk management.

About 25 players were invited from apool of 50 applicants, including Provincialand Federal employees, private citizens,and environmentalists, and were dividedinto ve teams. Each team had a playerrepresenting water, agriculture, the en-vironment, industry and policy. The drought tournament also drew about a dozen spectators observers who will take what they learned to help evaluate their own organizations droughtpreparedness.

Harvey Hill, manager of the Climate Decision Support and Adaptation unit, National Agro-climate Information Service, AESB Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, was one of the main

organizers. We wanted to design a tool to help individuals and institutions who are in deci-sion-making roles to think proactively about extreme events that are outside their normal ex-perience, he said. What are some of the factors theyll have to consider in coping with it? Wehave started with drought but plan to also conduct extremes tournaments related to excessmoisture in the future.

The game took place in the ctitious Oxbow Basin, with characteristics including precipita-tion and temperature normals, water demands, streamow, water storage, grain yields, soilerosion risk and wildlife habitat capacity. The organizers developed six years worth of climatescenarios based on an actual past event in the paleoclimate record that was used to adjusta series of years in the historic record, and gave each team a budget and a list of adaptationoptions that addressed either hydrological or agricultural drought. Referees provided expertadvice, judged the strategies the teams chose, and produced a report afterwards.

Competition between teams became a driving force. It may have eliminated some of the giveand take between sectors that occurs in the real world, Hayes noted. On the upside, a rancherwho participated told Hill that it was the rst time hed ever sat at a table with an environmen-talist and had a productive conversation.

One of the players pointed out that scenario planning has been done for a long time, at leastin water planning, but the unique aspect of this was the competition, Hayes said. She reallyliked that.

As the game progressed, players had questions and suggestions regarding the fairly complex

Canadians Pioneer Drought Planning Tournament

Roger Gibbins, president and CEO of the Canada West Founda-

tion, took part in the Canadian Drought Invitational Tournament.


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scoring system. Hill and other organizers are considering a number of possible modicationsbefore a next drought tournament, including more computerized modeling.

Because this was the rst time the fairly complex game had been played, the players werealso helping us understand how to make an actual operational product, Hill said. We hopethis year we will actually play the game with a real watershed.

Regardless of whether any team won or lost,

Hayes said, The best outcome of this wholeevent were the discussions that took place,and when the teams were allowed to devel-op innovative strategies, they came up withsome really rich ideas. Its really what youwant from some kind of drought planningexercise, to identify strategies that would bepossible that people hadnt thought about.

Hayes viewed the event as a landmark indrought planning. The exciting aspect ofthe IDT is that, in the big picture, it is oneof the rst events of its kind to be held

anywhere, particularly focused on drought,Hayes said. Drought planning literatureover the years has called for either droughtexercises or post-drought assessments to beconducted regularly as part of the drought

planning process. But no one really knew how to do them. Now there is a model to follow,thanks to the organizers of the IDT.

Hayes has already arranged for the IDT experience to be part of the 2011 Building a Sus-tainable Network of Drought Communities Workshop, June 8-9 in Chicago, organized by theEngaging Preparedness Communities working group of the National Integrated Drought Infor-mation System.

Drought Invitational, continued

Referees conferred during the tournament. One of their

roles was to judge the innovations that players devised.


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0 2011 National Drought Mitigation Center

Dings Research Bridges Climate, Economics and Agriculture

The NDMC is bidding farewell to Ya Ding, an agricultural econo-mist from China who has been with the Center as a post-doc since2006. She will return to China in June 2011 to assume a post as aprofessor at the School of Economics and Management at the Uni-versity of Electronic Science and Technology of China in Chengdu,in Sichuan province.

In her time at the NDMC, Ding has focused on the economicimpacts of drought and on considerations such as drought andgovernment programs that may affect farmers decisions to adopttillage practices that reduce their drought risk.

Evaluating the economic impacts of drought is far more complexthan it may sound at rst. For example, Ding has pointed out thatfarmers drought losses may be compensated by government-subsidized insurance or by emergency relief payments. In thepast, some efforts to quantify the effects of drought have countedfarmers losses and government payments as two separate ex-penses, when in fact, one partially offsets the other and morewidely distributes the impact of the loss.

Publication of Measuring Economic Impacts of Drought: A Review and Discussion, by Ya Ding,Michael J. Hayes and Melissa Widhalm, is pending at Disaster Prevention and Management.

Ding and collaborators went on to explore the effects of drought and certain government pro-grams on farmers decisions to adopt conservation tillage practices.

Conservation tillage reduces or minimizes plowing of soils and leaves increased levels of cropresidues in elds. It increases soil organic matter and water-holding capacity, prevents ero-sion, and increases soil moisture all of which help reduce the effects of drought. Conserva-tion tillage may also mitigate greenhouse gas emissions by sequestrating carbon dioxide (CO2)in soils. It requires an initial investment of time in learning new skills and of money in buy-ing new equipment, but ultimately takes less time and fuel than conventional plowing. TheEnvironmental Quality Incentive Program (EQIP) and the Conservation Security/Stewardship

Program (CSP) assist farmers with the transition to conservation tillage.

Experiencing drought makes farmers more likely to adopt conservation tillage practices, ac-cording to research by Ding and collaborators. The team, which includes Ding, Karina Scho-engold, agricultural economist at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and Tsegaye Tadesse,NDMC climatologist, published their ndings as The Impact of Weather Extremes on Agricul-tural Production Methods: Does drought increase adoption of conservation tillage practices? intheJournal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Vol. 34, No. 3, in 2009. They found that inNebraska, Kansas and South Dakota, which experienced drought between 1998 and 2006, thelevel of no-till farmland increased by 67 percent, compared with 38 percent in the nation asa whole for that same time period. They also found statistical evidence that farmers who buy

Ya Ding, agricultural economist


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crop insurance are less likely to adopt no-till practices.

Dings current research, in partnership with Schoengold, looks more closely at the role of gov-ernment programs in providing incentives or disincentives for agricultural producers to adoptconservation tillage techniques.

We are going to explain how disaster assistance programs, crop insurance and direct pay-ments affect adoption of conservation tillage systems, Ding said.

Data they are examining includes:

Crop insurance programs and total indemnity payments from the U.S. Department ofAgricultures Risk Management Agency (RMA), including the type of insurance contract andhow different types may affect farmers decisions.Disaster payment data from the USDAs Farm Service Agency (FSA). The researchers willtest the hypothesis that farmers who receive higher disaster payments have less incentiveto adopt practices such as conservation tillage.Data on tillage practices from the Crop Residue Management survey, conducted by theConservation Technology Information Center.

This project, which will conclude in 2012, is supported by UNLs Agricultural Research Division.

When you look at the effects of government programs, sometimes you see that program Acountered the effect of program B, Ding said. The researchers plan to make recommenda-tions to increase the likelihood that related programs will complement one another rather thancancel each other out.

During her time at the NDMC, Ding helped forge new interdisciplinary ground. Ya helped builda bridge between the climate community and the economic discipline, said Mike Hayes, direc-tor of the NDMC. He observed that although the two disciplines are both rigorously quantita-tive, they have different vocabulariesand different preferred methodsand goals of analysis. Understand-ing the intersections betweeneconomics, climate, water and

drought is a substantial interdisci-plinary undertaking. Ya has gainedexperience thats going to prepareher to have a huge impact on thosethings for China, Hayes said.

Ding earned a Ph.D. in 2005 inagricultural economics from KansasState University and a B.A. in 1999in international trade from RenminUniversity of China, Beijing.

Ding, continued

No-Till Acreage By State


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Widhalm Moving On to Organize Climate Information Project

It is with mixed feelings that the NDMC congratulates MelissaWidhalm, NDMC climatologist and program coordinator, on hernew position at Purdue, which starts in late May. Widhalm hasbeen with the NDMC since 2005, rst as a graduate student, andthen on staff since 2008, after completing a masters thesis onstate drought impact reporting.

In her time at the NDMC, Widhalm has focused on many aspectsof drought impacts and drought planning, from the national tothe local level. She has become one of the nations best-versedpeople in the status of state drought plans.

Because of Melissas understanding of each component ofdrought risk management, she was a tremendously valuableresource for the NDMC, said Mike Hayes, director of the NDMC.We will denitely miss her.

She has been involved in both operational and developmentalaspects of the Drought Impact Reporter (DIR), and most recentlyworked with programmers to design and implement a new da-tabase. The new DIR database has a direct connection to Co-

CoRaHS for drought impact reports and will be able to receivereports from states and other impact-collecting organizations. Widhalm was involved in allaspects of the Drought Ready Communities project, which resulted in the Guide to CommunityDrought Preparedness. The next stage of Drought Ready Communities will focus on integratingdrought planning into other kinds of planning that occur at the local level. She and others fromthe NDMC consulted with the state of Colorado on drought planning guidance for municipali-ties. Widhalm has been actively involved in K-12 outreach, helping to devise activities for stu-dents of all ages and presenting them as opportunities occur. In November 2010, she assumeda budgeting and coordination role at the NDMC.

At Purdue, Widhalm will serve as operations manager for a new U.S. Department of Agricul-ture grant aimed at improving the usability of climate information for agricultural producersin the Midwest. The NDMC is one of about 20 partners in the effort, so Widhalm will still be in

contact. Shell be based in the Department of Forestry and Natural Resources.

Widhalm received an M.S. in 2006 in Natural Resources with a specialization in Climate As-sessment and Impacts from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and a B.S. in 2004 in Meteo-rology from Northern Illinois University.

She is originally from the Chicago area and enjoys cooking, weather and landscape photogra-phy, and spending time with her family. The NDMC also congratulates her husband, Josh, oncompleting his doctorate and on his new position at Purdue.

Melissa Widhalm, climatologist


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Workshop to Expand Drought Communication and Networks

Drought and waterplanners are invited toBuilding a SustainableNetwork of Drought Com-munities 2011, June 8-9in Chicago, a workshopto help expand com-munication and increase

collaboration amongdrought and water management professionalsand stakeholders across the country.

The free workshop is sponsored by the Na-tional Integrated Drought Information System(NIDIS) Engaging Preparedness Communities(EPC) working group and the National DroughtMitigation Center (NDMC), with the AmericanPlanning Association serving as the local host.It will be at the Summit Executive Centre, 205N. Michigan Ave.

The workshops will include sessions on:

the NIDIS pilot studiesintegrating drought planning into multi-haz-ard planninghow water providers and municipalitiesare incorporating climate change into theirplanningthe Community Capitals Frameworkthe Southern Climate Impacts PlanningPrograms work with statesRecent trends in drought plansDrought Ready Communities

The Canadian Drought Invitational Tourna-ment exercise

A block of rooms has been reserved underNIDIS Drought Workshop at the Hyatt Regen-cy Chicago. For reservations call 312-565-1234or 800-233-1234. For details or to register,please visit http://go.unl.edu/epcworkshop1.Updates will also be available on drought.govand at drought.unl.edu.

Survey ResultsThe Engaging Preparedness Communitiesworking group of the National IntegratedDrought Information System conducted asurvey of drought planners to identify areasof interest. The 46 participants identied abroad range of issues in several categories:

PlanningCommunity levelIntegration of state and community ef-fortsFunding strategies

MonitoringUsing monitoring and prediction prod-uctsLatest innovationsTechniques for high resolution monitor-ing or interpolation

Climate Change and UncertaintyUsing paleoclimate recordsUnderstanding increased climate vari-ability and drought extremesAccounting for climate change anddrought frequency/severity

Collaboration EffortsSharing information within the droughtcommunityCollaborating with stakeholders

Limited Resources

Sustaining resources in underprivilegedcommunitiesAcquiring resources for collaboration

OtherNIDIS plans and participating agenciesImpact assessmentCommunicating drought status to thepublic
http://go.unl.edu/epcworkshop1http://go.unl.edu/epcworkshop1

spring 2011 drought scape

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