Resources for Drought

Lincoln -- No matter where you live, drought is a part of life. Being prepared for drought before the next one develops can help reduce the severity of its damaging effects on everything from agricultural production to urban water supplies to physical and emotional well-being and beyond.

The National Drought Mitigation Center, based at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln School of Natural Resources, along with Nebraska Extension, work with an array of partners to develop resources that can help you be better prepared before and during drought events. The most well-known of those resources is the National Drought Mitigation Center’s U.S. Drought Monitor, which provides a weekly drought outlook across all 50 states and U.S. territories, along with over 20 years of data collected over the monitor’s history.

“The Sept. 1, 2020, U.S. Drought Monitor showed nearly 33.3 percent of the U.S. and Puerto Rico area in drought, and Nebraska hasn’t avoided it,” NDMC director Mark Svoboda said. “Nearly 49 percent of the Cornhusker State is experiencing drought at this time. Since our founding 25 years ago, the National Drought Mitigation Center has been building and sharing resources to help people in times like these -- and to prepare for times like these. We have collaborated with local, state and federal partners to build drought monitoring and resilience tools. We have worked with land managers and U.S. residents across Nebraska (and the country) to learn how droughts affect them, and how they’ve best weathered them. We want to share what we’ve developed and learned with you through this collection of resources, and invite you to check out the full scope of our work at drought.unl.edu.”