Agricultural Drought

Source: Calculated Soil Moisture Ranking Percentile | NOAA

Agricultural droughts link the characteristics of both meteorological and hydrological droughts. This type of drought illustrates impacts to agriculture; which includes crops, livestock, and forestry. In order to determine if a drought can be classified as an agricultural drought, the following factors are monitored:

• Precipitation shortages
• Increases in evaporation and transpiration
• Topsoil and subsurface moisture deficits
• Reduced groundwater and reservoir levels

Though agricultural droughts are primarily short-term droughts, they can have lasting impacts on the industry and affect irrigated and non-irrigated production areas.

The image from NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center shows the how dry or wet the soil moisture is across the continental United States.