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Drought is an inescapable reality in many regions, including much of the western United States. With climate change, droughts are predicted to intensify and occur more frequently, making the imperative for drought management even greater. Many diverse actors – including private landowners, business owners, scientists, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and managers and policymakers within tribal, local, state, and federal government agencies – play multiple, often overlapping roles in preparing for and responding to drought. Managing water is, of course, one of the most important roles that humans play in both mitigating and responding to droughts; but, focusing only on “water managers” or “water management” fails to capture key elements related to the broader category of drought management. The respective roles played by those managing drought (as distinct from water managers), the interactions among them, and the consequences in particular contexts, are not well understood. Our team synthesized insights from 10 in-depth case studies to understand key facets of decision making about drought preparedness and response. We present a typology with four elements that collectively describe how decisions about drought preparedness and response are made (context and objective for a decision; actors responsible; choice being made or action taken; and how decisions interact with and influence other decisions). The typology provides a framework for system-level understanding of how and by whom complex decisions about drought management are made. Greater system-level understanding helps decision makers, program and research funders, and scientists to identify constraints to and opportunities for action, to learn from the past, and to integrate ecological impacts, thereby facilitating social learning among diverse participants in drought preparedness and response.

The relative scarcity of water resources has encouraged cities to create mechanisms to control water demand and avoid water stress. In the decision-making process, water companies need to assess the price influence on water demand predictions to design better policies. The aim of this study is to estimate the medium-term effectiveness of the implementation of a contingent tariff and its consequences for water demand elasticity to price. A novel model that requires only secondary data is proposed, that can be useful for guiding the drought planning process. The methodology consists of a framework that provides monthly predictions of water demand at the household level, considering price, seasonality, and previous water use. The results indicated that the contingent tariff promoted a reduction of 11–17% in water demand, but at a higher cost for low income households. Also, reduction in water demand was found to be inelastic to price increase. Using google search hits as a proxy for public interest, we found that water cost has a higher influence on users’ decision to save water than drought awareness.

Although we have made great efforts to reduce drought impacts, socio-economic damage has increased in recent years due to climate change, which has led to increasing frequency and intensity of drought. However, a community that has strong resilience to drought can recover, even from a long-lasting extreme drought, without severe damage. In the field of disaster management, resilience is the ability of a community to return to pre-disaster conditions. To ensure the resilience of a community, systematic drought planning is needed. Even though it is not possible to fully eliminate drought impacts, they can be reduced through systematic approaches such as drought planning. Drought planning requires linkages among sectoral and organizational measures to minimize vulnerabilities. In South Korea, water resources management is quite important because annual rainfall is concentrated during the summer monsoon season, so continuous monitoring and drought analysis are needed during the spring dry season. During the last several decades, the paradigm of drought response has changed and various measures have been implemented. This study analyzed the contents of the national drought plan in comparison with the state drought guidelines of the United States and lessons learned from extreme droughts in 2014–2015. In addition, we investigated how to ensure community resilience to droughts, including robustness, redundancy, rapidity, and resourcefulness. In conclusion, we proposed six essential components that form the basic framework of comprehensive regional drought planning in South Korea: monitoring, vulnerability analysis, mitigation, response, management, and updating. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We describe a theoretically based framework (C-PMT+HAPA) for designing and evaluating collaborative processes to increase preparation for natural hazards in situations in which preparedness decisions are shared and actions must be taken jointly by more than one party. The framework combines two health behavior change theories from psychology, protection motivation theory (PMT) and the health action process approach (HAPA), with collaboration theory in natural resources management. The framework provides much needed guidance for designing the activities in which participants will collaborate and suggests theoretically supported intermediate outcomes that may indicate a successful trajectory toward the ultimate goal of increased preparation. We used this framework in a collaborative process, with participation by ranchers with grazing permits and U.S. Forest Service managers on the Tonto National Forest, to increase preparation for drought on public rangelands in the Southwestern U.S. Evaluation of intermediate outcomes indicated: (1) improved interactions and relations between parties; (2) improved ability to appraise drought risks; (3) improved understanding of the U.S. Forest Service process for approving practices that increase preparation for drought; and; (4) increased motivation to implement these practices. The strength of the intermediate outcomes suggests that the C-PMT+HAPA framework would be an effective, theoretically supported framework for designing and evaluating collaborative processes to encourage preparation for natural hazards. More generally, the framework could contribute to more transdisciplinary, system- and action-oriented research on disaster risk reduction that is coproduced with multiple stakeholders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Water laws and drought plans are used to prioritize and allocate scarce water resources. Both have historically been human-centric, failing to account for non-human water needs. In this paper, we examine the development of instream flow legislation and the evolution of drought planning to highlight the growing concern for the non-human impacts of water scarcity. Utilizing a new framework for ecological drought, we analyzed five watershed-scale drought plans in southwestern Montana, USA to understand if, and how, the ecological impacts of drought are currently being assessed. We found that while these plans do account for some ecological impacts, it is primarily through the narrow lens of impacts to fish as measured by water temperature and streamflow. The latter is typically based on the same ecological principles used to determine instream flow requirements. We also found that other resource plans in the same watersheds (e.g., Watershed Restoration Plans, Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Watershed Assessments or United States Forest Service (USFS) Forest Plans) identify a broader range of ecological drought risks. Given limited resources and the potential for mutual benefits and synergies, we suggest greater integration between various planning processes could result in a more holistic consideration of water needs and uses across the landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The advent of Seasonal Livelihood Programming (SLP) as a resilience planning tool in rural Zimbabwe unpacks exciting practices, relevant in contemporary drought planning processes. The roll out and consultative nature of the SLP process has been viewed as appropriate in supporting the design of context-specific resilience building interventions against recurrent weather-induced shocks and stressors. This article examines the aptness of the SLP tool in strengthening drought-exposed communities' ability to absorb shocks in Zimbabwe. Against this background, the Sustainable Livelihoods Framework (SLF) becomes a relevant tool in contextualizing the SLP process and its contribution to resilience building for drought-exposed communities in Mangwe district. The study adopted the desk review approach, supplemented by qualitative data collected from government departments, NGOs and traditional leaders through open ended questionnaires, to gather insights on the SLP's role in capacitating Mangwe district to absorb drought shocks that threaten their livelihoods. The study found that the SLP tool does, indeed, add value to planning processes in resilience building through the analysis of shocks seasonality, livelihoods, vulnerability profiles and partnerships which lay a foundation for the design of relevant drought mitigation strategies. However, SLP processes need to integrate resource mobilization and explore the capacities of communities to execute the proposed context-specific interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is increasing concern worldwide about the ineffectiveness of current drought management practices that are largely based on crisis management. These practices are reactive and, therefore, only treat the symptoms (impacts) of drought rather than the underlying causes for the vulnerabilities associated with impacts. Through the adoption of national drought policies that are focused on risk reduction and complemented by drought mitigation or preparedness plans at various levels of government, the coping capacity of nations to manage droughts can be improved. The time for adopting an approach that emphasizes drought risk reduction is now, given the spiraling impacts of droughts in an ever-increasing number of sectors and the current and projected trends for the increased frequency, severity and duration of drought events in association with a changing climate. This paper discusses the underlying concepts of drought, the principles and objectives of national drought policies and a drought planning process that has been effective in the preparation of drought mitigation plans.

Water laws and drought plans are used to prioritize and allocate scarce water resources. Both have historically been human-centric, failing to account for non-human water needs. In this paper, we examine the development of instream flow legislation and the evolution of drought planning to highlight the growing concern for the non-human impacts of water scarcity. Utilizing a new framework for ecological drought, we analyzed five watershed-scale drought plans in southwestern Montana, USA to understand if, and how, the ecological impacts of drought are currently being assessed. We found that while these plans do account for some ecological impacts, it is primarily through the narrow lens of impacts to fish as measured by water temperature and streamflow. The latter is typically based on the same ecological principles used to determine instream flow requirements. We also found that other resource plans in the same watersheds (e.g., Watershed Restoration Plans, Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Watershed Assessments or United States Forest Service (USFS) Forest Plans) identify a broader range of ecological drought risks. Given limited resources and the potential for mutual benefits and synergies, we suggest greater integration between various planning processes could result in a more holistic consideration of water needs and uses across the landscape.

Increased preparation for drought among livestock producers reliant on rain-fed forage should reduce the economic losses and environmental degradation when the eventual drought occurs. We surveyed livestock ranchers in southeastern Arizona, USA, to determine their level of increased preparation for drought following 10 very dry years, as well as their level of threat from drought, importance of coping strategies, ranching experience, herd size, and satisfaction with drought management information. We used the protection motivation theory (PMT) model to structure our analysis because it provides a cognitive process approach to understand what motivates people to increase preparation for looming problems and how the likelihood of that behavior is a function of threat and coping strategy assessments. Thirty-seven percent of ranchers reported a high increase in preparedness, and another 31 % reported some increased preparation. Increased preparation was positively associated with three coping practices: reserve pastures, rotate grazing, and drought planning. However, increased preparation was negatively associated with drought threat severity, suggesting that the more prepared ranchers have implemented coping strategies that buffer them from the looming threat of drought. We found no relationship between increased preparation and levels of ranching experience, herd size, or satisfaction with drought information. Structure and content of education and assistance programs for improving rancher preparation for drought should benefit from the PMT-based analysis because it identifies drivers leading to increased preparedness and how those drivers differ among members of the ranching community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary Decision makers have continuously asked for better tools and resources to help them assess their risks related to climate variability and extremes. Drought is one of the risks they face, and the need for better drought risk tools and resources has also been expressed. With drought continuing to be one of the most problematic and costly natural disasters within the United States, and building on the work of the original National Drought Atlas (NDA) (1996), an updated and expanded Drought Risk Atlas (DRA) decision support tool for the United States was developed and is housed at the National Drought Mitigation Center. The DRA (1) provides weekly calculations of multiple indices/indicators, with more than a billion records made freely available, including the SPI, SPEI, PDSI, scPDSI, Deciles and U.S. Drought Monitor; (2) houses more than 3000 stations with data through 2012, nearly tripling the station count of the original NDA; (3) utilizes a much longer period of record, nearly double that of the NDA in most cases; (4) when fully completed, will house a cache of more than 500,000 gridded drought index maps; (5) will allow us to analyze and assess trends and various characteristics of drought, including frequency, intensity, duration and magnitude; (6) will become a resource for the National Weather Service (NWS) personnel around the country by transferring the application into the field through integration within the NWS’s newly developed Local Climate Analysis Tool (LCAT); and (7) work directly with the National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS) program office to include the information contained in the DRA into NIDIS’s regional drought early warning system pilot basins and the U.S. Drought Portal for broad dissemination to the user community and general public. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: In recent years droughts have been occurring frequently, and their impacts are being aggravated by the rise in water demand and the variability in hydro-meteorological variables due to climate change. As a result, drought hydrology has been receiving much attention. A variety of concepts have been applied to modeling droughts, ranging from simplistic approaches to more complex models. It is important to understand different modeling approaches as well as their advantages and limitations. This paper, supplementing the previous paper () where different concepts of droughts were highlighted, reviews different methodologies used for drought modeling, which include drought forecasting, probability based modeling, spatio-temporal analysis, use of Global Climate Models (GCMs) for drought scenarios, land data assimilation systems for drought modeling, and drought planning. It is found that there have been significant improvements in modeling droughts over the past three decades. Hybrid models, incorporating large scale climate indices, seem to be promising for long lead-time drought forecasting. Further research is needed to understand the spatio-temporal complexity of droughts under climate change due to changes in spatio-temporal variability of precipitation. Applications of copula based models for multivariate drought characterization seem to be promising for better drought characterization. Research on decision support systems should be advanced for issuing warnings, assessing risk, and taking precautionary measures, and the effective ways for the flow of information from decision makers to users need to be developed. Finally, some remarks are made regarding the future outlook for drought research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Salt River Project (SRP) was created in the early 1900s to assure an adequate water supply for its shareholders in the Salt River Valley, Arizona, USA. The straight forward job of storing inflows and meeting demand from a single reservoir system soon became more complex. As the population of the Salt River Valley swelled, additional reservoirs were added to the system, alternative supplies of water were developed, and hydro-power generation became a financial consideration in reservoir operations. Nevertheless, the primary operational objective continues to be the conjunctive management of multiple sources of water to ensure an adequate carry-over supply of water for SRP’s shareholders in the Salt River Valley. This objective has traditionally been accomplished by managing the reservoir system as if each time the reservoirs fill to capacity is the beginning of an extended drought comparable to the worst historical drought in recorded history. Over the past 20 years, several subtle yet significant events have taken place which raise concerns regarding SRP’s traditional method of water planning and management. Changes in demand patterns as land is converted from mainly agricultural use to urban use, an ongoing drought rivaling the historical drought of record, tree-ring studies suggesting even more severe droughts having occurred in pre-historic times and, the specter of a changing climate due to global warming all suggest that a business as usual approach to water management and planning may no longer be appropriate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Water allocation systems are challenged by hydrologic droughts, which reduce available water supplies and can adversely affect human and environmental systems. To address this problem, drought management mechanisms have been instituted in jurisdictions around the world. Historically, these mechanisms have involved a crisis management or reactive approach. An important trend during the past decade in places such as the United States has been a shift to a more proactive approach, emphasizing drought preparedness and local involvement. Unfortunately, local capacity for drought planning is highly variable, with some local governments and organizations proving to be more capable than others of taking on new responsibilities. This paper reports on a study of drought planning and water allocation in the State of Minnesota. Factors facilitating and constraining local capacity for drought planning were identified using in-depth key informant interviews with state officials and members of two small Minnesota cities, combined with an analysis of pertinent documentation. A key factor contributing to the effectiveness of Minnesota''s system is a water allocation system with explicit priorities during shortages, and provisions for restrictions. At the same time, the requirement that water suppliers create Public Water Supply Emergency Conservation Plans (PWSECP) clarifies the roles and responsibilities of key local actors. Unfortunately, the research revealed that mandated PWSECP are not always implemented, and that awareness of drought and drought planning measures in general may be poor at the local level. From the perspective of the two cities evaluated, factors that contributed to local capacity included sound financial and human resources, and (in some cases) effective vertical and horizontal linkages. This analysis of experiences in Minnesota highlights problems that can occur when senior governments establish policy frameworks that increase responsibilities at the local level without also addressing local capacity. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Drought is an abstract and complex phenomenon that can be difficult for many people to comprehend. Proactive planning to improve response during drought events is necessary but complicated because it involves stakeholders and decision-makers with competing interests. A category of games, called serious games, have proven to be helpful when learning about abstract concepts, and for improving communication and conflict resolution with respect to water-related issues. In this study, we present a new in-person role-playing game that serves as a drought educational tool in both classroom and professional settings. The message of the game emphasizes the importance of communication and cooperation between various communities and sectors that can be affected by drought. Furthermore, it also encourages discussions and collaborations between stakeholders involved in drought planning and can serve as an icebreaker activity. The game has been played in a variety of settings including university classes, university extension workshops, and drought workshops. This study describes the game itself, its development, and the results of surveys from game participants that were used to evaluate the usability of the game as an educational and icebreaker activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Droughts are risks characterized by their complexity, uncertainty, and a series of other features, which differentiate them from other natural disasters and affect the strategies designed to manage them. These characteristics highlight the close relationship between drought management and water resources management. The following hypothesis is raised in this study—unsatisfactory integration of a drought-risk and water resources management strategies, increases the vulnerability to drought. To corroborate this hypothesis, the Spanish case was analyzed, where droughts are a recurrent phenomenon, due to the Mediterranean climate. Starting from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) framework, which has been proposed to characterize vulnerability as a function of exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity, this study analyzed the vulnerability in the Spanish River Basin Districts, through—(i) the integration of the predictable effects of climate change and the increased risk of exposure in hydrologic planning; (ii) the pressure on water resources that determines the sensitivity of the systems; and (iii) the development and implementation of drought management plans as a fundamental tool, in order to adapt before these events occur. The results showed that despite important advances in the process of conceiving and managing droughts, in Spain, there are still important gaps for an adequate integration of droughts risk into the water resource strategies. Therefore, despite the improvements, drought-risk vulnerability of the systems remained high. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]