Monitoring Agricultural Drought in Australia - Monitoring and Predicting Agricultural Drought: A Global Study - page 371

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PgEn

Figure 29.1 Current (2000) land-use in Australia. The entire grazed and cropped region is
drought prone.

w ith protracted drought. Severe production losses may be tolerated for
on e year or longer, but when dry conditions persist for several years as
th ey did, for example, in northeastern Australia from 1991 to 1996, rural
co mmunities deteriorate, people abandon the land, and the suicide rate in
ru ral areas increases (Stehlik et al., 1999). Impacts are also evident at a na-
tio nal scale, particularly when droughts are widespread or centered on the
m ost productive regions at critical times. For instance, the extremely dry
w inters of 1902, 1914, 1940, 1944, 1982, and 1994 saw large reductions
in national wheat yields (figure 29.2).
One of the most serious failures of the wheat crop occurred in 1982.
It is estimated that the 1982-83 drought cost Australia in excess of U.S.
$1 .5 billion, resulting mainly from the failure of the 1982 wheat crop. Ap-
pr oximately 60% of all farms in Australia involved in cropping or grazing
w ere affected by drought during this period (Purtill et al., 1983), and the

[371

Figure 29.2 A comparison of annual anomalies in the national wheat yield corrected for a
rising trend in yields (bars) and percentile growing season (May-October) rainfall for the
cro pping region (figure 29.1).