Source: UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA submitted to NRP
REDUCING THE NATION`S DROUGHT RISK: DROUGHT MITIGATION, NEBRASKA
Sponsoring Institution
National Institute of Food and Agriculture
Project Status
COMPLETE
Funding Source
SPECIAL GRANT
Reporting Frequency
Annual
Accession No.
0218766
Grant No.
2009-34345-19858
Cumulative Award Amt.
$437,243.00
Proposal No.
2009-04561
Multistate No.
(N/A)
Project Start Date
Aug 1, 2009
Project End Date
Jul 31, 2011
Grant Year
2009
Program Code
[KL]- Drought Mitigation, NE
Recipient Organization
UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA
(N/A)
LINCOLN,NE 68583
Performing Department
School of Natural Resources
Non Technical Summary
The issues surrounding drought, water, climate change will only become more critical in the future across the United States and around the world. The National Drought Mitigation Center is well-positioned and experienced as an end-to-end organization emphasizing research, operations, and applications connecting the science with all stakeholders dealing with these issues. Traditionally, the drought and water policy community has followed a crisis management approach in dealing with droughts that focuses on post-event response. In contrast, a drought risk management approach emphasizes pre-drought preparedness through improved drought monitoring, planning, and mitigation. This project supports the work of the National Drought Mitigation Center to improve on a variety of drought risk management strategies across the United States through the implementation of six critical objectives. Building on the momentum that has been established with the NDMC, as well as other programs like the National Integrated Drought Information System, provides a great opportunity to move the country from an emphasis on crisis management to more effective drought risk management.
Animal Health Component
75%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
(N/A)
Applied
75%
Developmental
25%
Classification

Knowledge Area (KA)Subject of Investigation (SOI)Field of Science (FOS)Percent
1320210207025%
1320430207025%
1326050207050%
Knowledge Area
132 - Weather and Climate;

Subject Of Investigation
0430 - Climate; 0210 - Water resources; 6050 - Communities, areas, and regions;

Field Of Science
2070 - Meteorology and climatology;
Goals / Objectives
This Special Grant will provide support for the Drought Mitigation, NE, Project/National Drought Mitigation Center (NDMC) program in the School of Natural Resources at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. The NDMC's mission is to lessen societal vulnerability to drought through a risk-based management approach. The NDMC works with local, state, and tribal governments; federal agencies; and non-governmental organizations. To fulfill this mission, the NDMC's activities focus on developing and evaluating existing drought policies and plans in the United States and elsewhere with the goal of improving drought-coping capacity; developing and evaluating new techniques and methodologies for monitoring drought severity and its impacts; and disseminating data and information to decision makers and other users. The specific objectives of this Project are: 1)enhance the drought monitoring capabilities at the local, regional, national, and international scales; 2)serve in an advisory capacity to policy makers and others by providing scientific and policy-relevant information on drought and water management issues; 3)conduct and foster collaborative research on drought monitoring, risk management, impact and vulnerability assessment, mitigation, and preparedness techniques and methodologies; 4)foster information dissemination on drought assessment, mitigation, preparedness, and response options for a variety of decision makers; 5)organize workshops, conferences, and seminars on drought preparedness planning and mitigation measures; and 6) collaborate with and provide training for international scientists and facilitate the timely exchange of information on drought mitigation technologies with foreign governments, international and non-governmental organizations, and regional organizations. These objectives have been identified through a long interactive process with representatives of federal, state, local, and tribal governments; regional organizations; and foreign governments. They are compatible with the existing needs and emerging activities and technologies in drought management.
Project Methods
To accomplish Objective 1, this project will continue drought monitoring efforts, especially on the production of the weekly U.S. Drought Monitor map and the monthly North American Drought Monitor map, as well as the enhancement of decision support tools based on these both of these products. The NDMC is also improving the daily collection and archiving of drought impact information through its Drought Impact Reporter tool. Efforts continue to bring the spatial and temporal resolutions of the drought monitoring products closer to the needs of various stakeholders using these products. To accomplish Objective 2, this project will enable the strengthening of linkages with state drought and water planners, policy makers, the media, and others. This will include being heavily involved in NIDIS activities throughout the year. For many of these requests, the NDMC staff will be available to respond as needed. To accomplish Objective 3, this project will continue to build on the research efforts in the areas of drought planning, drought indices, remote sensing, and risk and impact assessment. To accomplish Objective 4, this project will provide much of the infrastructure for the maintenance of the NDMC website, as well as the maintenance of the U.S. Drought Monitor and the Drought Impact Reporter websites. This project will also help with the dissemination of information through other venues such as the NDMC newsletter DroughtScape. The NDMC is also called upon at times to produce fact sheets and other informational documents as part of the interactions we have with a variety of groups. To accomplish Objective 5, this project will assist with the organization of the workshops and listening sessions scheduled to take place during 2009-2010. Other activities, such as the development of educational materials focusing on the issues of drought and water management, will also be part of this project. To accomplish Objective 6, this project will provide some assistance for international activities during 2009-2010 that take place at the NDMC. These activities must also be shown to benefit the United States as well.

Progress 08/01/09 to 07/31/11

Outputs
OUTPUTS: The "Drought Mitigation, Nebraska" project (NEB-38-076) had six objectives that support the NDMC's overall mission to reduce societal vulnerability to drought. The outputs described below illustrate the fulfillment of these objectives, including one objective dealing with the dissemination of information. The other objectives deal with drought monitoring, scientific and policy-relevant advising, research, workshop presentations, and international collaborations. During the project, in the area of drought monitoring, the NDMC supported two authors for the weekly U.S. Drought Monitor and the monthly North American Drought Monitor. The NDMC also provided daily updates of the Drought Impact Reporter and biweekly updates of the Vegetation Drought Response Index (VegDRI). The NDMC hosted the NDMC [http://drought.unl.edu], U.S. Drought Monitor [http://drought.unl.edu/dm], Drought Impact Reporter [http://droughtreporter.unl.edu], and VegDRI [http://drought.unl.edu/vegdri/VegDRI_Main.htm] websites. Research achievements during the project included the NDMC's success in being a part of 18 competitive grants from a variety of federal agencies and organizations, totaling more than $13 million. The NDMC is also part of 16 grants that are currently pending. Collectively, during the 2009-11 project time span, the NDMC developed 104 publications, including: 14 peer-reviewed journal articles published (with 2 articles currently "in press" and 7 "submitted") and numerous book chapters and abstracts. The NDMC helped organize and host 12 drought-, climate-, and water-related workshops held both nationally and internationally. The NDMC disseminated information in several ways: 1) The NDMC faculty were "invited" to give approximately 140 presentations around the world during the project; 2) the NDMC's quarterly newsletter, DroughtScape, [http://drought.unl.edu/droughtscape/droughtscapecurrent.htm]; and 3) NDMC staff members fielded hundreds of media calls and were quoted by top media outlets around the country. The NDMC was also involved in multiple K-12 educational outreach activities during the project. In 2011 alone, the 6 events held around Lincoln and eastern and central Nebraska included participation within the Severe Weather Symposium and Family Weatherfest, Earth Wellness Festival, several different Nature Nights, Nebraska Children's Groundwater Festival, Weather Camp, and NaturePalooza, UNL Extension Science Festival. The NDMC hosted national and international visitors at the NDMC, including hosting visiting scientists from around the world. In 2011, the NDMC hosted 18 national and international visitors, and had five visiting scientists spend an extended time. The visiting scientists were from Korea, China (2), Slovakia, and Ethiopia. NDMC faculty also made numerous trips overseas during the project. In 2011, these trips included trips to Ethiopia, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Spain, Turkey, Thailand, and China. PARTICIPANTS: Most NDMC staff have participated within this project. At the current time, the NDMC has 20 staff members: 7 faculty, 1 post-doc, 10 staff, and 2 visiting scientists. In addition, 2 graduate students work with the NDMC. The staff have diverse backgrounds in climatology, meteorology, hydrology, remote sensing, geography, anthropology, public participation, journalism, community and regional planning, GIS, computer science, history, human dimensions, agricultural leadership and education, environmental studies, and rural sociology. This diversity is needed to accomplish the objectives of this project. The NDMC engages a wide variety of collaborators in order to carry out its mission across the United States and around the world. Within the United States, this collaboration includes federal agencies (i.e., NOAA, USDA, USGS, NASA, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and Bureau of Reclamation) and federal programs such as the National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS), universities, states, tribes, local entities and communities, non-profit organizations, and the private sector. International collaboration has included includes scientists and policy makers in 1) Canada and Mexico with the North American Drought Monitor product; 2) Czech Republic and Austria on drought monitoring and climate change research; 3) Slovenia on assistance and information exchange with the Drought Management Center for Southeast Europe (DMCSEE); 4) Australia on drought policy and drought monitoring research and information exchange; and 5) Spain, Portugal, Morocco, China, Vietnam, Jordan, and India on drought policy advising and information exchange. TARGET AUDIENCES: Since this project supports the overall NDMC mission to reduce societal vulnerability to drought, the target audience for the project is focused on the agricultural community and how the outputs and outcomes make a difference for that community. This includes individual producers as well as agribusinesses, rural communities supported by agriculture, and policy makers dealing with agricultural-related issues. It also includes USDA, state agriculture departments, and agricultural service organizations. The federal executive and legislative branches of government are also target audiences. Information supported by this project was provided to numerous congressional offices during the past year. PROJECT MODIFICATIONS: Nothing significant to report during this reporting period.

Impacts
The NDMC, U.S. Drought Monitor, and Drought Impact Reporter (DIR) websites have increased to approximately 500,000, 1.8 million, and 70,000 visits per year, respectively. Both the NDMC website and the DIR had new versions released in 2011. A new website called "Managing Drought Risk on the Ranch" developed by the NDMC) at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln to help livestock producers develop drought plans was also released in summer 2011. The U.S. Drought Monitor continues to be used as a trigger for drought relief by USDA's Farm Service Agency and the IRS for livestock tax programs, as well as by multiple states in the drought programs. As a result of the NDMC's Vegetation Drought Response Index (VegDRI) and Vegetation Outlook (VegOut) tools, scientists and officials from Canada, Argentina, India, and Europe are interested in developing similar regionally-appropriate tools for their regions. The Drought Impact Reporter (DIR) continues to be one of the products featured on drought.gov, the web portal of the National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS). In addition, the National Weather Service Drought Information Statements completed by the NWS offices around the country frequently cite the DIR as a source of impact information. The NDMC participated in a variety of NIDIS-related events during 2011, including host several national webinars for the Engaging Preparedness Community Working Group. The NDMC also participated in webinars and seasonal outlook workshops being sponsored by NIDIS and targeted toward the regions experiencing drought across the southern Plains and Southeastern U.S. As a result of a World Meteorological Organization meeting held in Lincoln, NE, in December 2009 (co-hosted by the NDMC and the School of Natural Resources at UNL) and a follow-up meeting on agricultural drought indices held in Murcia, Spain, in June 2010, the World Meteorological Organization announced publication in March 2011 of Agricultural Drought Indices - Proceedings of an Expert Meeting, edited by Donald A. Wilhite, Deborah A. Wood (NDMC), Mannava V.K. Sivakumar and Raymond P. Motha.

Publications

  • Anderson, M.C., C. Hain, B. Wardlow, A. Pimstein, J.R. Mecikalski, and W.P. Kustas. 2011. Evaluation of a drought index based on thermal remote sensing of evapotranspiration over the continental U.S. Journal of Climate 24:2025-2044.
  • Berhan, G., T. Tadesse, S. Hill, and S. Atnafu. 2011. Drought Monitoring in Food-Insecure Areas of Ethiopia by Using Satellite Technologies. In: Experiences of Climate Change Adaptation in Africa, Leal Filho, Walter (Ed.). Climate Change Management, 2011, DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-22315-0.
  • Ding Y., M Hayes, and M. Widhalm. 2011. Measuring economic impacts of drought: a review and discussion. Disaster Prevention and Management, 20(4): 434-446.
  • Hayes, M., M. Svoboda, N. Wall, and M. Widhalm. 2011. The Lincoln Declaration on Drought Indices: Universal meteorological drought index recommended. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 92(4): 485-488.
  • Hlavinka, P., M. Trnka, J. Balek, D. Semeradova, M. Hayes, M. Svoboda, J. Eitzinger, M. Mozny, M. Fischer, E. Hunt, and Z. Zalud. 2011. Development and evaluation of the SoilClim model for water balance and soil climate estimates. Agricultural Water Management, 98(8): 1249-1261.
  • Knutson, C.L., T. Haigh, M. Hayes, M. Widlham, J. Nothwehr, and M. Kleinschmidt. 2011. Farmer Perceptions of Sustainable Agriculture Practices and Drought Risk Reduction in Nebraska, USA, Journal of Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems, 26(3): 255-266.
  • Sakamoto, T., B.D. Wardlow, and A.A. Gitelson. 2011. Detecting region-based corn phenology in the U.S. Corn Belt using MODIS WDRVI data. IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing 49(6):1926-1936.
  • Swain, S., B.D. Wardlow, S. Narumalani, T. Tadesse, and K. Callahan. 2011. Assessment of vegetation response to drought in Nebraska using Terra-MODIS land surface temperature and normalized difference vegetation index. GIScience and Remote Sensing 48(3):432-455.
  • Wardlow, B. 2011. New and Emerging Remote Sensing Approached for Drought Monitoring. Submitted to the Foreign Agricultural Organization (FAO) of the United Nations (UN), Ankara, Turkey office.
  • Wardlow, B. 2011. Introduction to Satellite Remote Sensing for Drought Monitoring. Submitted to the Foreign Agricultural Organization (FAO) of the United Nations (UN), Ankara, Turkey office.


Progress 08/01/09 to 07/31/10

Outputs
OUTPUTS: The "Drought Mitigation, Nebraska" project had six objectives that support the NDMC's overall mission to reduce societal vulnerability to drought. The outputs described below illustrate the fulfillment of these objectives, including one objective dealing with the dissemination of information. The other objectives deal with drought monitoring, scientific and policy-relevant advising, research, workshop presentations, and international collaborations. In the area of drought monitoring, the NDMC continues to support two authors for the weekly U.S. Drought Monitor. The NDMC also provides daily updates of the Drought Impact Reporter and biweekly updates of the Vegetation Drought Response Index (VegDRI). The NDMC hosts the NDMC [http://drought.unl.edu], U.S. Drought Monitor [http://drought.unl.edu/dm], Drought Impact Reporter [http://droughtreporter.unl.edu], and VegDRI [http://drought.unl.edu/vegdri/VegDRI_Main.htm] websites. Research achievements include the NDMC's success in being a part of 7 new competitive grants received in 2010 from a variety of federal agencies and organizations, totaling more than $6 million. The NDMC is also part of 12 grants that are currently pending. Collectively, in 2010, the NDMC developed 55 publications, including: 6 peer-reviewed journal articles published, 4 "in press" articles, 13 "submitted" articles, 6 book chapters either "in press" or "submitted", 9 technical reports, and 17 abstracts. The NDMC helped organize and host 9 drought-, climate-, and water-related workshops held in Lincoln, NE (3); Washington, D.C. (2); Boise, ID; Raleigh, NC; Amman, Jordan; and Menemen, Turkey. Other achievements in 2010: the completion of a Water and Drought Portal for the Republican River Basin in Nebraska, Kansas, and Colorado; a drought planning guide for communities called "Drought Ready Communities"; and helping Colorado in the revision of their state's Drought Mitigation Plan. The NDMC disseminated information in several ways: 1) The NDMC faculty were "invited" to give 79 presentations around the world in 2010 alone (they had 20 "volunteer" presentations for a total of 99 presentations overall); 2) The NDMC's quarterly newsletter, DroughtScape; and 3) NDMC staff members fielded hundreds of media calls and were quoted by top media outlets around the country. The NDMC was also involved in multiple K-12 educational outreach activities during 2010. The 10 events held around Lincoln and eastern and central Nebraska included participation within the Severe Weather Symposium, Earth Wellness Festival, 9 different Nature Nights, Conservation Sensation, Nebraska Children's Groundwater Festival, Sunday with a Scientist, Big Red Summer Camp, Exxon Mobil Bernard Harris Summer Camp, NaturePalooza, UNL Extension Science Festival. The NDMC also hosted 22 national and international visitors at the NDMC, and had five visiting scientists spend an extended time at the NDMC during 2010. The visiting scientists were from Korea, Japan, Australia, and the Netherlands. NDMC faculty also made numerous trips overseas during 2010, including Argentina, Brazil, Poland, Switzerland, Turkey, Jordan, and Ethiopia. PARTICIPANTS: Most NDMC staff participate within this project. At the current time, the NDMC has 23 staff members: 6 faculty, 2 post-docs, 13 staff, and 2 visiting scientists. In addition, 2 graduate students work with the NDMC. The staff have diverse backgrounds in climatology, meteorology, hydrology, remote sensing, geography, anthropology, public participation, economics, journalism, community and regional planning, GIS, computer science, history, human dimensions, agricultural leadership and education, environmental studies, and rural sociology. This diversity is needed to accomplish the objectives of this project. The NDMC engages a wide variety of collaborators in order to carry out its mission across the United States and around the world. Within the United States, this collaboration includes federal agencies (i.e., NOAA, USDA, USGS, NASA, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and Bureau of Reclamation) and federal programs such as the National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS), universities, states, tribes, local entities and communities, non-profit organizations, and the private sector. International collaboration has included includes scientists and policy makers in 1) Canada and Mexico with the North American Drought Monitor product; 2) Czech Republic and Austria on drought monitoring and climate change research; 3) Slovenia on assistance and information exchange with the Drought Management Center for Southeast Europe (DMCSEE); 4) Australia on drought policy and drought monitoring research and information exchange; and 5) Spain, Portugal, Morocco, China, Vietnam, Jordan, and India on drought policy advising and information exchange. TARGET AUDIENCES: Since this project supports the overall NDMC mission to reduce societal vulnerability to drought, the target audience for the project is focused on the agricultural community and how the outputs and outcomes make a difference for that community. This includes individual producers as well as agribusinesses, rural communities supported by agriculture, and policy makers dealing with agricultural-related issues. It also includes USDA, state agriculture departments, and agricultural service organizations. The federal executive and legislative branches of government are also target audiences. Information supported by this project was provided to numerous congressional offices during the past year. PROJECT MODIFICATIONS: Nothing significant to report during this reporting period.

Impacts
The NDMC, U.S. Drought Monitor, and Drought Impact Reporter websites have increased to approximately 500,000, 1.8 million, and 70,000 visits per year, respectively. The U.S. Drought Monitor continues to be used as a trigger for drought relief by USDA's Farm Service Agency and the IRS for livestock tax programs, as well as by multiple states in the drought programs. As a result of the NDMC's Vegetation Drought Response Index (VegDRI) and Vegetation Outlook (VegOut) tools, scientists and officials from Canada, Argentina, India, and Europe are interested in developing similar regionally-appropriate tools for their regions. The Drought Impact Reporter (DIR) continues to be one of the products featured on drought.gov, the web portal of the National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS). In addition, the National Weather Service Drought Information Statements completed by the NWS offices around the country frequently cite the DIR as a source of impact information. The incorporation of drought impact data from local observers as part of the Collaborative Community Rain, Hail, and Snow (CoCoRaHS) network wass a major addition to the DIR as of 2010. CoCoRaHS has more than 15,000 observers in 50 states. Countries and officials in Europe and Canada have expressed interest in adopting the DIR strategy for reporting drought impacts. There has also been interest in a "climate change impacts reporter" similar to the DIR being developed to track climate change impact baselines. Several of the workshops organized by the NDMC in 2010 were targeted for agricultural producers and important feedback about how various tools are being used and how they can be improved was collected from the participants attending these workshops. Finally, as a result of a World Meteorological Organization meeting held in Lincoln, NE, in December 2009 (co-hosted by the NDMC and the School of Natural Resources at UNL), the Standardized Precipitation Index was recommended as one index that should be implemented by all meteorological services around the world. A follow-up meeting on agricultural drought indices was held in Murcia, Spain, in summer 2010. An additional meeting on hydrological drought indices is being held in New Delhi, India, in January 2011. Each of these meetings is going to improve the capacities for global drought monitoring.

Publications

  • Wardlow, B., M. Hayes, M. Svoboda, and T. Tadesse, 2010. Opportunities for integrating NASA data into drought applications: a prospectus from the National Drought Mitigation Center. NASA White Paper, NASA Headquarters, Hydrology and Agricultural Applications Branch, Washington, D.C.
  • Woudenberg, D., Svoboda, M., Wall, N., Bernadt, T., Widhalm, M., Okalebo, J.,Bergman, C., Jones, S., Wood, D., Knutson, C. (2010) Low Flow/Stage Related Impacts in the Upper Colorado River Basin: NDMC Contract Report to the Central, Water & Weather Services Division. NOAA/NWS, Kansas City, MO.
  • Woudenberg, D., Svoboda, M., Gutzmer, D. (2010) Low Flow/Stage Related Impacts in the Alabama, Coosa, and Tallapoosa (ACT) River Basins, and the Apalachicola, Chattahoochee, and Flint (ACF) Basins: NDMC Contract Report to the Southern Hydrologic Services Branch. NOAA/NWS, Fort Worth, TX.
  • Guide to Community Drought Preparedness (2010), co-authored by the Drought Ready Communities research team, [http://drought.unl.edu/plan/DRC.htm].
  • Ryu, J.H., M.D. Svoboda, J.D. Lenters, T. Tadesse, and C. Knutson, 2010. Finding Potential Extents for ENSO-Driven Hydrologic Drought Forecasts in the United States, Climatic Change, 101:575-597.
  • Tadesse, T., B.D. Wardlow, K. Callahan, and C.C. Poulsen, 2010. Integrating satellite, climate, oceanic, and biophysical information to predict the general vegetation condition. Association of American Geographers' Annual Meeting, Washington, DC, April 14-18.
  • Tadesse, T., B. Wardlow, M. Hayes, M. Svoboda, and J. Brown. 2010. The Vegetation Condition Outlook (VegOut): a new method for predicting vegetation seasonal greenness. GIScience and Remote Sensing 47 (1): 25-52.
  • Tadesse, T, B. Wardlow, M. Hayes, M. Svoboda, J. Li, K. Callahan, and C.C. Poulsen, 2010. Scenario-based vegetation outlook (S-VegOut): predicting general vegetation condition using different scenarios over the central United States. 90th Annual American Meteorological Society Annual Meeting, Atlanta, GA, January 17-21.
  • Tadesse, T., B. D. Wardlow, M. J. Hayes, M. D. Svoboda, J. Li, C. C. Poulsen, and K. Callahan, 2010. Predicting general vegetation condition using different scenarios over the central U.S. Second Annual International Conference of "Water for Food: Growing More with Less", May 2-5, 2010, Lincoln, Nebraska.
  • Wardlow, B.D. and S.L. Egbert, 2010. A comparison of MODIS 250-m evi and ndvi data for crop mapping in the U.S. Central Great Plains. International Journal of Remote Sensing, 31(3), 805-830.