A new early warning system developed by two nationally recognized centers at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, along with the U.S. Geological Survey, can help alert stakeholders as drought begins.
The Quick Drought Response Index, or QuickDRI, is a weekly alarm sensitive to early-stage drought conditions and rapidly evolving drought events.
It was developed by the Center for Advanced Land Management Information Technologies and the National Drought Mitigation Center, both part of the university’s School of Natural Resources, and in coordination with USGS.
The index combines and analyzes four drought indicators — precipitation, soil moisture, vegetation health and evaporative moisture loss from plants — all at once to better “see” drought conditions emerge before traditional drought-monitoring tools.
“Most traditional drought indicators focus on a single environmental characteristic such as soil moisture, whereas QuickDRI represents a collective dryness of variables in a given location,” said Brian Wardlow, QuickDRI project co-lead and director of the Center for Advanced Land Management Information Technologies.
“Our preliminary assessment shows QuickDRI is able to consistently detect short-term dryness patterns across the United States.” Jesslyn Brown, lead for QuickDRI operations at USGS, said QuickDRI fills a gap in drought monitoring because of its sensitivity to short-term changes.
Fire managers with the Bureau of Land Management and other government agencies, along with farmers and rangeland owners, will be able to rely on QuickDRI as periods of hot, dry weather add to vegetation stress.
“Next generation tools like QuickDRI are being developed to help bring better drought early warning capacity to the weekly U.S. Drought Monitor map.” The drought monitor — used by policymakers, media and researchers — has become such an integral part of mapping drought across the United States that it is used in the allocation of USDA Farm Service Agency drought relief.
NOAA ranks drought second in terms of national weather-related economic impacts behind hurricanes, with annual losses nearing $9 billion in the United States.
Archived maps have been created dating back to January 2000 to provide a resource for assessing abnormal vegetation and climate conditions over a longer historical period.