Understanding Your Risk

Understanding Your Risk and Impacts

Each drought produces a unique set of impacts, depending not only on its severity, duration, and spatial extent but also on ever-changing social conditions. Society’s vulnerability to drought is determined by a wide range of factors, both physical and social, such as demographic trends and geographic characteristics. One of the challenges of planning for drought is understanding its impacts, both direct and indirect. An overview of drought impacts and several reviews of the unique impacts of past droughts are presented in this section, and information on current U.S. droughts is also available here.

The Impacts of Drought An NDMC analysis of drought’s economic, environmental, and social effects.
Checklist of Historical, Current, and Potential Drought Impacts helps planners prepare for future droughts. A related publication is How to Reduce Drought Risk, a step-by-step process for users to identify actions that can be taken to reduce potential drought-related impacts.

Drought Impacts in the United States A month-by-month summary of drought’s impacts, including links to state drought planning resources.
A Comparison of Droughts, Floods, and Hurricanes in the United States A comparison of the temporal and spatial aspects, costs and losses, and fatalities associated with 3 natural hazards.
The Dust Bowl A discussion of the impacts—social, environmental, and economic—of drought in the United States in the 1930s.
The 1996 Drought in the United States: Case Study A look at the impacts of the 1996 drought.

Impacts of Drought in South Africa, 1980–94 A list of drought’s direct and indirect impacts.
Reported Effects of the 1997 El Niño through October 30 An NDMC analysis of media reports.
Reported Drought-related Effects of the 1997–98 El Niño for November, December, January, February, March, April An NDMC analysis of media reports. The April report contains a 6-month summary of El Niño’s worldwide effects.

Articles on impacts of various international droughts, from the Drought Network News archive:
Spring Crops in Bulgaria Damaged by 1996 Summer Drought
Drought Continues in Hungary in 1995
Five-year Drought Continues in Spain
Severe Drought in Italy: Characteristics, Impacts, and Mitigation Strategies
Assessment of Recent Droughts in Tamil Nadu
Drought Profile: Haryana State in North India
Persistent Drought in 1993 Affects Bulgarian Agriculture
Economic Impacts Emphasize Need for Greater Drought Planning and Management in El Salvador