Tracking Drought Impacts Across Space, Time, Sectors and Scales

Hydrologic Extremes and Society
Chair: Hilary McMillan (San Diego State University)
This session focuses on observations, prediction, communication and adaptation to hydrologic extremes. By bringing together ideas from flood and drought research, we analyze similarities and differences in societal impacts and interactions with these two extremes. We explore how providing observations and information about hydrologic extremes can change the way societies understand and react to crisis events.

"Tracking Drought Impacts Across Space, Time, Sectors and Scales"
Speaker: Kelly Smith (University of Nebraska Lincoln)

In the 1990s and early 2000s, drought disaster researchers called for creation of a comprehensive database of drought impacts. But creation of such a database presumes that there is a single perspective from which all impacts will be visible. In fact, drought impacts are like fractals – as you focus on smaller scales, new realms of detail become apparent. An individual farmer’s drought-related loss or the hardship that an agricultural community experiences may be completely lost when drought impacts are aggregated to a national scale. Furthermore, drought impacts occur within specific contexts – a household has to water landscape and garden plants more; a reservoir operator produces less hydropower; fish die because a river dried up; fewer lift tickets are sold when there is no snow; and so on. Decision-makers in each of these sectors may or may not consider drought – an abstraction, often one of many pressures – as causing a separate impact, and they typically describe its effects, nested within a context that includes both long- and short term institutional effects. And many people have the adaptive capacity to foresee and prevent losses – a ski resort may offer hiking opportunities instead – so lack of water does not always translate into a drought impact. While this may seem obvious, it means there is no common framework for identifying, let alone quantifying, drought impacts. Sector and scale both matter. Large-scale commodity crops and hydropower production are some of the easiest drought impacts to quantify. Health effects to individuals and ecosystems are some of the hardest. Data collection requires resources, and in the absence of unlimited resources, we need to determine what data needs to be collected – or analyzed – to manage drought impacts.

水文极端事件与社会

主持人：希尔丽·麦克米伦（圣地亚哥州立大学）
本会议聚焦于水文极端事件的观测、预测、沟通和适应性调整。通过整合洪水与干旱研究领域的观点，我们分析了社会对这两种极端事件的影响及其相互作用中的异同。我们探讨了提供水文极端事件观测和信息如何改变社会对危机事件的认知和反应方式。

“跨空间、时间、领域和尺度的干旱影响追踪”
演讲者：凯莉·史密斯（内布拉斯加大学林肯分校）
在20世纪90年代和21世纪初，干旱灾害研究者呼吁建立全面的干旱影响数据库。然而，创建此类数据库的前提是存在一个能够全面展现所有影响的单一视角。实际上，干旱影响如同分形——随着我们聚焦于更小的尺度，新的细节领域便会显现。单个农民因干旱而遭受的损失或农业社区所经历的困难，在干旱影响汇总至国家层面时可能会完全消失。此外，干旱影响发生在特定的背景下——家庭需要为景观和花园植物增加灌溉；水库运营商发电量减少；河流干涸导致鱼类死亡；无雪时滑雪票销量下降等。每个领域的决策者可能或可能不会将干旱——一种抽象的概念，通常是众多压力之一——视为单独的影响，并且他们通常描述其影响，这些影响嵌套在包含长期和短期制度效应的背景之中。许多人具备预见和防止损失的能力——滑雪胜地可能提供徒步旅行机会——因此缺水并不总是转化为干旱影响。虽然这看似显而易见，但意味着不存在识别，更不用说量化干旱影响的通用框架。领域和尺度都至关重要。大规模的商品作物和水电生产是一些最容易量化干旱影响的领域。对个人和生态系统健康的影响则是最难量化的。数据收集需要资源，在没有无限资源的情况下，我们需要确定需要收集或分析哪些数据来管理干旱影响。