In this Section:

	Background
	Project Overview
	Project Components:
	Physical Characteristics
	Social Vulnerability
	Impacts
	Monitoring
	References
	Related Links
	Contacts

Colorado River near Lake Powell in March 2002 (top) and March 2003 (bottom).
Credit: John Dohrenwend

Research and Products:
Drought Planning and Mitigation

Drought Monitoring

From its inception, CLIMAS has reported on climate and weather conditions and forecasts through its website and CLIMAS Update newsletter. Beginning with the 2002–2003 End Insight project, CLIMAS has closely monitored drought and reported monthly on drought and hydroclimatic conditions through our Southwest Climate Outlook (now in collaboration with Arizona Cooperative Extension). The following section describes other CLIMAS activities related to drought monitoring.

Figure 8. U.S. Drought Monitor.[more details]

Arizona Drought Monitoring
Monitoring drought status is the backbone of the 2004 Arizona Drought Preparedness Plan. CLIMAS scientists have been members of the multi-agency Arizona DroughtMonitoring Technical Committee (MTC) since its inception, and CLIMAS continues to contribute to improvements in drought monitoring. The MTC reports drought status each month to the director of the Arizona Department of Water Resources (ADWR; lead agency for drought) and, in cases of severe drought, to an Interagency Coordinating Committee consisting of representatives from state and federal agencies.

Monthly drought reports can be found on the ADWR drought website. The monthly drought reports contain watershed-scale drought status calculated from a modified version of a method developed for Georgia (Steinemann, 2004; Steinemann et al., 2005), as well as reports on precipitation (State Climate Office; USDA-NRCS), snow (USDA-NRCS), streamflow (USGS; USDA-NRCS), reservoir status (USDA-NRCS; CLIMAS), vegetation status (CLIMAS), and climate forecasts (National Weather Service).

In 2006–2007, CLIMAS plans to work closely with Arizona Cooperative Extension to conduct a sensitivity analysis of the MTC’s drought status calculation system. The analysis will help refine the system and improve the representation of drought status for decision making. With climatologists at Arizona State University, we plan to continue work to develop and test alternative indices for determining short- and long-term drought status in the Southwest.

Figure 9. CLIMAS Drought Workshops. [more details]

Local Area Impact Assessment Groups
CLIMAS is collaborating with Arizona Cooperative Extension and ADWR to develop an innovative program of county-level volunteer drought monitoring through implementation of Local Area Impact Assessment Groups (LAIAGs), as recommended in the Arizona Drought Preparedness Plan. The pilot group was formed in fall 2005 in Cochise County in southeastern Arizona and is made up of participants from across the county.

One function of the LAIAGs is to monitor and report drought impacts to the MTC. No systematic collection and analysis of social, environmental and economic data focused on the impacts of drought within the United States exists today. LAIAGs will provide primarily qualitative reports of drought impacts. These reports will aid the MTC in bridging a key gap in drought status assessments by helping to define the connection between quantitative monitoring data, such as precipitation and streamflow, and the impacts associated with various stages of drought severity. Some LAIAG volunteers also contribute unofficial precipitation observations to Arizona Rain Log, a collaboration between Arizona Cooperative Extension and the SAHRA NSF Science and Technology Center at the University of Arizona. Making the data-impacts connection will aid decision makers and emergency managers in anticipating drought impacts and defining appropriate mitigation and response measures; and help communities understand local drought conditions and impacts and better prepare for future drought.

Drought Impacts Database
With funding from The University of Arizona Water Sustainability Program, CLIMAS began development of a database of existing drought impacts from state agricultural data, news reports, wildlife statistics, and other sources. In conjunction with ADWR and the National Drought Mitigation Center, CLIMAS is consolidating the database and developing protocols for data collection and input. One component of the drought impacts database is a drought newspaper article archive, from which CLIMAS has developed a preliminary Arizona Drought timeline and accompanying narrative.

Capacity Building
A key aspect of developing climate services for the Southwest is building the capacity for citizens to understand climate information and use it in operations and decisions to mitigate drought-related risk. Over the last several years, CLIMAS and partners such as SAHRA, Arizona Cooperative Extension, the Arizona Water Institute, and others have convened workshops on drought, climate variability, and climate change. The goal of the workshops is to improve understanding about climate and how it affects the Southwest, learn how to use various online tools to evaluate climate information, provide fundamental information about developing local-level drought plans, and learn about stakeholder needs for information on drought and climate change.