A new cooperative agreement between the National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service will pave the way for new research opportunities.
Over the past 30 years, the NDMC has been the main resource for assessing the location and intensity of drought in the U.S., primarily through its flagship product, the U.S. Drought Monitor. Since the NDMC’s inception in 1995, its primary source of funding has been the USDA Office of the Chief Economist, renewed on a yearly basis.
Like the previous agreement with the Office of the Chief Economist, the main objective of the new Agricultural Research Service agreement is to continue providing operational support for the USDM, said Mark Svoboda, NDMC Director. A key difference will be that this will be a four-year agreement.
“In addition to the NDMC's primary operational support of the Drought Monitor, our emphasis on drought mitigation through monitoring, education and planning will remain the key focus moving forward,” he said. “This is an exciting opportunity to expand on our work.”
Drought Monitor authors are made up of scientists from the NDMC, USDA, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA. Every week, one of the authors works with a network of over 400 experts and uses a convergence of evidence approach to incorporate many climate and drought indicators into a depiction of drought conditions in the U.S. and its territories. The Drought Center is the web host and academic partner in the USDM, each week adding nearly 40,000 maps showing drought in U.S. states, regions and other areas.
The Drought Monitor is important to agricultural producers, land managers, policymakers and the media. Since the 2008 Farm Bill, the USDA has used the Drought Monitor to trigger aid through drought relief programs totaling over $30 billion.
This effort came to fruition through collaboration with university leadership and Nebraska's Congressional delegation. The new cooperative agreement will enhance the Drought Monitor through new tools and increased data availability for the development team, making more tailored information available for regional drought services and extension partners.
In addition to the Drought Monitor and the growing number of maps and other products available on the website, the partnership between NDMC and USDA has supported development of other resources including Grass-Cast, Agriculture in Drought, Managing Drought Risk on the Ranch, weekly and monthly communication products, tools for tracking drought impacts, technical inputs such as the Composite Drought Indicator, economic research, the Forest Drought Risk Index (ForDRI) and much more. A compendium of NDMC’s work for the USDA through 2024 chronicles the evolution of many key products.
