Monitoring Drought in the United States: Status and Trends - Monitoring and Predicting Agricultural Drought: A Global Study - page 129

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initiative toward a national drought policy (Wilhite, 2001; Svoboda et
al., 2002). For example, the states significantly affected by drought in
2000, 2001, and 2002 used the product to track the severity of drought
conditions in their state and make policy decisions on emergency and
mitigation actions. Users appreciate a product that simplifies a difficult and
complex issue but is based on scientific climatic indices and parameters.
Certainly, the Drought Monitor cannot always capture the local situ-
ation accurately. The partners in this activity are striving to improve the
science of drought monitoring by improving networks and developing new
climatic indices and other assessment tools to make this a better product
in the future.

Drought Mitigation
C rop and livestock producers can take numerous actions to reduce the
po tential impact of drought on their productive capacity. The most obvious
of these actions is the introduction of irrigation to provide supplemental
w ater to crops and pastures during drought periods. But irrigation also
in creases the costs of production through an increase in resource input
co sts (i.e., energy costs for water applications), and therefore irrigation may
no t lead to an increase in profit margin. Other mitigation actions that can
be used by agricultural producers are the application of climate forecasts
an d other climate-based information to planting decisions, especially in
th e preplanting period, leading to changes in crop type/variety, planting
da te, fertilization practices, and cultivation practices. Livestock producers
m ay also alter the size of herds and grazing plans to reflect shortages
in forage and market prices. Increased on-farm storage of forage is an
ap propriate mitigation strategy to increase the resilience of producers to
dr ought periods.

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Su mmary
The United States continues to experience drought and, as a result, suf-
fers significant economic losses. The U.S. Drought Monitor, developed in
1999 as an experimental product by the NDMC, USDA, and NOAA, has
become an operational product that has gained widespread acceptance by
scientists, resource managers, policy makers, the business community, and
others. The success of this product depends on the collaboration between
th e principal partners and other organizations, including the user commu-
nity, and the integration of several climate and water supply indices and
other climate parameters into a weekly assessment of drought severity and
spatial extent. The Drought Monitor map and the procedures used in its
production are transferable to other drought-prone regions, with appro-
priate modifications.