research findings drought

Feature | September 28, 2021

Nasa drought research shows value of both climate mitigation and adaptation.

This July 7, 2021 image from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA's Terra satellite shows the nearly snow-free mountain peaks of the Sierra Nevada mountain range. According to state and federal scientists, snowmelt in this region happened three to four weeks earlier than normal, and instead of flowing downstream, most of this water soaked into mountain soils still parched from previous droughts. Credit: NASA's Earth Observatory / Lauren Dauphin

By Jessica Merzdorf Evans, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

New NASA research is showing how drought in the western U.S. is expected to change in the future, providing stakeholders with crucial information for decision making.

Seasonal summer rains have done little to offset drought conditions gripping the western United States, with California and Nevada seeing record July heat and moderate-to-exceptional drought according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Now, new NASA research is showing how drought in the region is expected to change in the future, providing stakeholders with crucial information for decision making.

The study, published in the peer-reviewed journal, Earth’s Future , was led by scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) and funded by NOAA’s C limate Program Office and NASA’s Modeling, Analysis and Prediction (MAP) Program . It found that the western United States is headed for prolonged drought conditions whether greenhouse gas emissions continue to climb or are aggressively reined in.

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However, the study also showed that the severity of acute, extreme drought events and the overall severity of prolonged drought conditions can be reduced with emissions-curbing efforts compared to a high-emissions future. This is important information for decision-makers considering two tools they can use to reduce climate impacts: Adaptation and mitigation.

Adaptation is a term used by the scientific community and policymakers to describe policies that address impacts that will occur or are already occurring. For example, adaptation to rising sea levels might include relocating low-lying infrastructure . By contrast, mitigation – efforts to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere – can limit the severity of future impacts or even prevent them from happening by limiting how much the climate changes. Switching to cleaner energy sources and reducing greenhouse warming-driven ice melt are examples of mitigation to sea level rise.

Rather than representing competing options, adaptation and mitigation can both be used to address climate impacts. This new research shows how the two can complement each other when it comes to drought.

“Mitigation has clear benefits for reducing the frequency and severity of single-year droughts,” said lead author Ben Cook, a research scientist at GISS and an adjunct associate research scientist at Columbia University. “We may have more of these 20-year drought periods, but if we can avoid the really sharp, short-term, extreme spikes, then that may be something that’s easier to adapt to.”

Turning to the Past to Understand the Future

Both acute single-year and prolonged multi-year droughts occur naturally due to variations in ocean currents, precipitation and other factors. But climate change is turning up the heat in addition to these natural variations, causing even more water to evaporate from plants and soil, resulting in increased dryness even in the absence of major precipitation deficits.

To understand the southwest’s vulnerability and tendency towards drought and the factors that contribute to it, the team selected the severe single-year drought of 2002 and the extended drought of 2000 to 2020 as examples of acute and prolonged droughts respectively. They then looked at how common these acute and prolonged droughts were, not only during the period of instrumental records, but also using reconstructed drought conditions stretching back more than a thousand years and state-of-the-art supercomputer simulations of the future.

The team reconstructed soil moisture from the years 800 to 1900 using tree ring data from the region. The thickness of tree rings varies due to the wetness or dryness of each year, providing scientists with a reliable way of estimating how much rain fell in a given year. For years after 1900, they used directly measured soil moisture values. To look at a range of possible futures, the team used data from the latest version of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project, or CMIP6 . CMIP6 is an ensemble of climate model simulations that provide climate change projections depending on a range of possible greenhouse gas emission scenarios, allowing scientists and policymakers to directly compare the impacts of different emissions policies. And under different emissions scenarios, drought behaves differently.

The southwestern United States has been prone to drought for millennia. But warming temperatures dry the soil further, and the region’s natural aridity becomes the backdrop for a higher risk of severe and prolonged droughts if greenhouse gas emissions continue to climb, said Kate Marvel, a research scientist at GISS and Columbia University.

“The paleoclimate record shows that this region is prone to drought,” she said. “There have been really, really severe droughts in the past: For instance, we know there were megadroughts in the 13th century. But against the backdrop of natural climate variability — the things the climate would do even without human influence — we are confident increases in greenhouse gases make the temperature rise, and we’re fairly confident that increases drought risk in this region.”

A Future Not Yet Set in Stone

Understanding that some amount of increased drought can be expected under high and low emission scenarios alike has implications for adaptation strategies like rationing water usage and changing agricultural practices . At the same time, the study’s finding that greenhouse emissions reductions still matter for extreme drought underscores the value of mitigation.

“The ongoing southwestern drought highlights the profound effects dry conditions have on people and the economy,” said Ko Barrett, senior advisor for climate in NOAA’s Office of Research and vice-chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Sixth Assessment Report. “The study clearly highlights the impact that greenhouse gas mitigation could have on the occurrence and severity of Southwestern drought. It is not too late to act and blunt impacts like severe Southwestern drought periods and short-term drought events.”

Marvel agreed. “There’s going to be a new normal regardless,” she said. “There’s going to have to be some adaptation to a drier regional climate. But the degree of that adaptation – how often these droughts happen, what happens to the drought risk – that’s basically under our control.”

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• Review Article
• Published: 06 February 2024

Crop traits and production under drought

• Vincent Vadez   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-2014-0281 1 , 2 , 3 ,
• Alexandre Grondin 1 ,
• Karine Chenu 4 ,
• Amelia Henry 5 ,
• Laurent Laplaze 1 ,
• Emilie J. Millet 6 &
• Andrea Carminati   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-7415-0480 7  

Nature Reviews Earth & Environment volume  5 ,  pages 211–225 ( 2024 ) Cite this article

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• Agroecology
• Climate change
• Ecophysiology

Drought limits crop productivity and threatens global food security, with moderate drought stress — when crops grow at a reduced rate — commonly experienced. Increasing plant tolerance to moderate drought is a key target for adaptation and management, but efforts to understand and increase drought tolerance often focus on more extreme drought that causes complete crop failure and only consider crop genetics. In this Review, we discuss the influence of moderate drought on crop productivity and the role of physiological traits in drought tolerance and adaptation. Traits related to crop water use, water capture, water availability, transpiration efficiency and phenology impact drought adaptation, but their overall effect varies situationally. For example, early restrictions in transpiration, higher transpiration efficiency or altered tillering increase water availability during grain filling and can double yield in some drought scenarios. However, these same traits under less severe drought scenarios can also lead to yield penalties. To assess when and under what conditions traits will be beneficial, crop models are used to integrate the effects of genetics, the environment and management, estimating the expected yield responses under these combinations of scenarios and traits. More robust characterization of moderate drought tolerance and better integration between plant genetic information and modelling will enable the local selection of crop varieties suited to the expected drought scenarios.

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Acknowledgements

V.V. was supported by the Make Our Planet Great Again (MOPGA) ICARUS project (Improve Crops in Arid Regions and future climates) funded by the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR) (grant ANR-17-MPGA-0011), by the Occitanie Region through a financial contribution to grant ANR-17-MPGA-0011 and by Montpellier University of Excellence (I-Site MUSE). A.G. acknowledges support from the Agence National de la Recherche (PlastiMil grant ANR-20-CE20-0016). A.H. acknowledges support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation projects ‘Stress tolerant rice for Africa and South Asia’ and ‘PlantDirect - Dry Direct Seeded Rice for the Indo-Gangetic Plains of India’. K.C. acknowledges support from the Australian Research Council (ARC Linkage Project LP210200723) and The University of Queensland. L.L. acknowledges support from the Agence National de la Recherche (SorDrought grant ANR-23-CE20-0052).

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Vadez, V., Grondin, A., Chenu, K. et al. Crop traits and production under drought. Nat Rev Earth Environ 5 , 211–225 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43017-023-00514-w

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The Mental Health Outcomes of Drought: A Systematic Review and Causal Process Diagram

1 Department of Environmental Health, Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University, Atlanta, GA 30322, USA; E-Mails: moc.liamg@snivylloh (H.V.); [email protected] (J.B.); vog.cdc@5fsh (S.S.)

2 Cooperative Institute for Climate and Satellites-NC, Asheville, NC 27695, USA

Shubhayu Saha

Jeremy j. hess.

3 Department of Emergency Medicine, Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, GA 30307, USA

Little is understood about the long term, indirect health consequences of drought (a period of abnormally dry weather). In particular, the implications of drought for mental health via pathways such as loss of livelihood, diminished social support, and rupture of place bonds have not been extensively studied, leaving a knowledge gap for practitioners and researchers alike. A systematic review of literature was performed to examine the mental health effects of drought. The systematic review results were synthesized to create a causal process diagram that illustrates the pathways linking drought effects to mental health outcomes. Eighty-two articles using a variety of methods in different contexts were gathered from the systematic review. The pathways in the causal process diagram with greatest support in the literature are those focusing on the economic and migratory effects of drought. The diagram highlights the complexity of the relationships between drought and mental health, including the multiple ways that factors can interact and lead to various outcomes. The systematic review and resulting causal process diagram can be used in both practice and theory, including prevention planning, public health programming, vulnerability and risk assessment, and research question guidance. The use of a causal process diagram provides a much needed avenue for integrating the findings of diverse research to further the understanding of the mental health implications of drought.

1. Introduction

Drought has been common and widespread in the United States, with perhaps the most notable occurrence being the 1930s drought in the Great Plains, often referred to as the Dust Bowl. This was the US’s most intense drought period to date, with several high-severity droughts occurring in rapid succession such that affected regions could not recover between episodes [ 1 , 2 ]. The 1930s drought lead to widespread agricultural devastation and exacerbated the economic burden of the Great Depression [ 2 ]. In the 1950s the Great Plains and southwestern US suffered through another devastating drought, leading to federal drought disaster declarations in 244 of 245 Texas counties [ 3 ]. In the late 1980s, the northwestern US and northern Great Plains suffered a significant drought that became the most expensive disaster of any kind to affect the country up to that point, including agricultural damages and damages from wildfires throughout Yellowstone National Park [ 3 , 4 ]. More recently at the peak of the historical drought of 2012, 61.8% of the contiguous US experienced moderate to extreme drought conditions [ 5 ]. Continuing into 2015, several West Coast, Southwest, and Southern Great Plains states experienced moderate to severe droughts that led to declared states of emergency, record low lake levels, road-closing dust storms, and wildfires [ 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 ]. Conditions were particularly dire in California, where the governor issued an executive order mandating substantial water reductions in response [ 12 ].

1.1. Climate Change and Drought

Over the past 50 years, drought frequency and intensity has increased with rising temperatures in much of the Southeast and large parts of the West, and confidence is high that longer-term droughts are expected to intensify in large areas of the Southwest, southern Great Plains, and Southeast [ 13 , 14 ]. There is evidence of shrinking glaciers, decreasing amounts of water in spring snowpack, and shifts to earlier peak flow in snow dominated rivers in western North America [ 15 ]. In the most recent assessment report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) stated with high confidence that water resources are already strained in parts of North America; however, it is not currently possible to attribute the changes is North American drought frequency to anthropogenic climate change [ 16 ]. Even so, there is high confidence that water supplies in arid and semiarid western United States are projected to be further stressed by climate change, which will result in amplified water scarcity and drought conditions [ 13 , 14 , 16 ].

1.2. Drought Health Effects

Droughts have been characterized as slow-moving disasters. Like other disasters, droughts often have significant health effects, typically mediated through complex environmental, economic and social pathways. Observed adverse impacts on livelihoods, economic activities, infrastructure, and access to services in North American urban and rural settlements over the past few decades have been at least partially attributed to droughts [ 16 ]. Furthermore, given the projections of persistent drought conditions described in both the Fifth Assessment Report of the IPCC and the US National Climate Assessment, there is concern that adverse health outcomes may become more prevalent [ 13 , 14 , 16 ].

The catalogue of harmful health effects associated with drought is still being assembled and is an area of active study. Several distinct health outcomes have been identified and multiple causal pathways proposed. For example, increased amounts of airborne dust and particulate air pollution can exacerbate asthma, respiratory allergies, and airway disease [ 17 ]. Drought conditions can reduce the availability of fresh water, increasing the risk for diseases associated with poor hygiene [ 18 ]. Drought can also compromise agricultural production, decreasing food security and threatening livelihoods [ 19 ]. From an economic perspective, slow-onset disasters like drought have been found to have a more extensive and destructive impact in the long term than fast-onset disasters [ 20 ]. For example, the 2012 drought and heat wave in the US is estimated to have cost approximately $31 billion—one of the country’s most expensive weather disasters [ 21 ]. Despite the magnitude of these impacts, the literature on drought health impacts remains relatively thin, particularly in the category of mental health.

1.3. Characterization of Exposure

Exposure assessment issues complicate the study of drought health outcomes. Drought onset is difficult to determine: Several dry years in a row may or may not indicate the beginning of a long and significant drought phase [ 22 , 23 ]. Furthermore, environmental changes accumulate over time and can exhibit threshold dynamics, making the consequences of drought not immediately identifiable [ 24 , 25 , 26 ]. Drought analyses are also complicated by discipline-specific definitions of the hazard and related issues. There are several different ways of measuring drought, including meteorological, hydrological, agricultural and socioeconomic [ 27 ]. Meteorological drought is defined based on the duration of the dry period and the degree of dryness in comparison to an average. Hydrological drought is associated with a shortfall of precipitation on surface or subsurface water supply, and is often defined on a watershed or river basin scale. Agricultural drought combines characteristics from meteorological and hydrological drought, such as precipitation shortages, soil water deficits, reduced groundwater, etc ., and relates them to agricultural impacts. While these first three approaches measure drought in physical terms, socioeconomic drought associates meteorological, hydrological, or agricultural drought with economic measures. Socioeconomic drought occurs when deficient water supply interrupts or decreases the supply of economic goods.

1.4. Characterization of Health Outcomes

Defining health outcomes associated with drought is also challenging, particularly in the area of mental health. Interpretations of mental health outcomes vary across studies, and often outcomes are not explicitly defined. Although mental health concepts are complex and vary with social, cultural, and familial norms and values, categorization of adverse mental health outcomes is a prerequisite of further study. It is important to distinguish mental health and mental disorder. According to the World Health Organization, mental health is “a state of well-being in which an individual realizes his or her own abilities, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and is able to make a contribution to his or her community” [ 28 ]. Mental health is more than just the absence of a mental illness or disorder, and it is determined by a host of socioeconomic, biological, and environmental factors.

According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, 5th edition, of the American Psychiatric Association (DSM-V), mental disorders are characterized by “clinically significant disturbance in an individual’s cognition, emotion regulation, or behavior that reflects a dysfunction in the psychological, biological, or developmental processes underlying mental functioning” [ 29 ]. The DSM-V includes extensive diagnostic criteria and codes for mental disorders and is typically used by clinicians to assess patients and aid in developing a comprehensive case formation. Depressive and anxiety disorders are two of the most prevalent mental disorders, and are responsible for approximately 44% of the mental and behavioral health disease burden in the United States [ 30 ]. Common symptoms of depressive disorders include the presence of sad, empty, or irritable mood, accompanied by bodily and cognitive changes that significantly affect the individual’s capacity to function [ 31 ]. Anxiety disorders are characterized by excessive fear and anxiety, as well as worry about any number of events or activities [ 32 ]. Suicide ideation may also be a feature of depressive and anxiety disorders [ 31 , 32 ].

1.5. Sub-Acute Disasters and Mental Health

There is a paucity of quantitative epidemiological evidence relating mental health to sub-acute weather disasters like drought [ 33 , 34 ]. Most of the research in the area of climate and mental health has focused primarily on the health effects of acute weather events and natural disasters, such as earthquakes, heat waves, floods, hurricanes, and other storms [ 35 , 36 , 37 , 38 ]. While these studies demonstrate increasing attention to the mental health impacts of disasters, there is still much to be discovered about adverse health impacts of non-acute events. Droughts pose a unique threat to mental health with their slow onset, extended exposure windows, and indirect mechanisms of effects, leaving a knowledge gap to be addressed.

1.6. Objectives

Our aim is to examine the direct and indirect pathways linking drought to adverse mental health outcomes. Our objectives are to:

• Systematically review the existing literature concerning drought and mental health outcomes.
• Use systematic review results to develop a causal process diagram depicting the pathways linking drought and mental health outcomes.
• Examine risk and protective factors associated with drought exposure and mental health outcomes, including the coping mechanisms used by populations experiencing drought.

Synthesizing the research and developing a framework to illustrate the role that drought has on mental health will enable a better understanding of the complexities between specific components of this relationship, as well as highlight areas in need of further research. Additionally, examining the vulnerabilities that make individuals more susceptible to negative mental health outcomes will bring attention to those who need it the most while also shedding light on possible avenues for intervention.

To address objective 1, a systematic review process was adapted from those described in Khan , et al. [ 39 ], Hosking and Campbell-Lendrum [ 40 ], and Hess , et al. [ 41 ]. To capture as many relevant citations as possible, keyword/phrase searches were conducted during January 2015 in PubMed, PsychINFO, Web of Science, and Google Scholar. Each database was searched for following terms: “drought” and (“mental health” or “suicide” or “depression” or “anxiety” or “emotional distress” or “psychological distress” or “schizophrenia” or “bipolar” or “manic depression”). Titles and abstracts of the resulting citations were first reviewed to determine relevance to the project. Only peer-reviewed journal articles about human response to aspects of extreme weather events were included in this study. Review articles were excluded unless they added novel information to the body of knowledge, such as a meta-synthesis or the new application of a theoretical framework. The full papers of the remaining citations were assessed to select for continued inclusion those studies that related to a major component of a causal pathway linking drought to a human mental health response. All determinations were made by HV in consultation with the other authors.

To address objective 2, a causal process diagram using information from the systematic review was created to depict the numerous complex links in the drought/mental health relationship. Causal process diagrams are visual representations of the way in which interacting factors behave within a complex system. They are not only useful for summarizing and organizing information from interdisciplinary research, but are also logically rigorous and can help with planning data collection and analysis [ 42 ]. Our goal was to develop a causal process diagram to synthesize existing knowledge surrounding the mental health outcomes of drought and provide guidance about future research directions. The diagram was constructed following the recommended approach for developing and reporting a causal process diagram as described in Joffe and Mindell [ 42 ] and expands upon previous frameworks proposed by Perry [ 43 ] and Berry, Bowen and Kjellstrom [ 33 ]. Mental health outcomes were grouped in the diagram according to similar symptoms listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V).

To address objective 3, a table was created using information from the systematic review that focused on specific factors that may influence how susceptible a person or larger group is to the exposures detailed in the causal process diagram. We also included several coping mechanisms found in the literature.

3.1. Study Characteristics

Of the 765 studies initially identified, 82 were eligible for inclusion in the final review. Figure 1 contains a flow chart of article inclusion and exclusion. The majority of studies involved original research and were from developed nations, with Australia being the most common study locale. Eighty studies contributed information in support of links in the diagram, while two studies found no association. A full summary of the study characteristics can be found in Table 1 .

Flow chart of article inclusion and exclusion.

Summary of Characteristics of Included Studies.

Percent totals may not sum to 100% due to rounding.

It is important to note that not all of the papers included in the final review specifically analyzed mental health outcomes of drought. However, articles were included if there were discussions of mental health outcomes in the context of populations who are vulnerable to drought. Oftentimes these papers looked at specific coping behaviors or protective factors related to mental health. These types of results were included in a separate table ( Table 2 ) meant to supplement the causal process diagram.

Vulnerabilities, protective factors and coping mechanisms for mental health effects of drought.

Number within parenthesis indicates how many articles were found in the review to support that characteristic, mechanism or factor.

3.2. Causal Process Diagrams

The following causal process diagrams highlight major pathways identified in the literature through which drought has been linked with adverse mental health outcomes. Some pathways have greater evidentiary support than others, as indicated by a greater number of supporting articles found through the systematic review. In each of the causal process diagrams, the number within the parenthesis indicates how many articles were found to support that step in the pathway. Of greatest support is the pathway focusing on the economic effects of drought, with a total of 33 papers of support. Drought can adversely impact individual and community economic activities, particularly those with livelihoods influenced by weather conditions and water access [ 44 , 45 , 46 , 47 , 48 , 49 , 50 , 51 , 52 , 53 , 54 , 55 , 56 , 57 ]. The agricultural sector is typically hit hardest, and farmers can experience declined production, crop loss, and livestock failure [ 34 , 58 , 59 , 60 , 61 , 62 , 63 , 64 ]. These losses can lead to financial constraints and unemployment, as well as issues associated with food availability and access [ 24 , 61 , 63 , 64 , 65 , 66 , 67 , 68 , 69 ]. Migration away from the drought prone area, often in search of better employment opportunities, is a related outcome [ 56 , 60 , 64 , 70 , 71 , 72 , 73 , 74 , 75 , 76 ]. Figure 2 highlights the direct economic effects of drought.

Direct economic effects of drought.

While individuals will react to financial hardship in different ways, there is evidence that stress and social isolation may occur, as well as the possibility of increased workloads, decreased time and resources, and disruption of children’s education so that they can help at home or with the family business [ 44 , 45 , 48 , 50 , 53 , 58 , 67 , 77 , 78 , 79 , 80 ]. These stressful situations cause uncertainty about the future, increasing anxiety [ 44 , 50 , 51 , 56 , 58 , 67 , 81 ]. Shame and humiliation over financial struggles may also contribute to social isolation and depressive symptoms [ 46 , 67 , 82 ]. Additionally, there is evidence that these types of situations allow stress and tension to permeate the household, sometimes resulting in domestic abuse [ 44 , 46 , 48 , 50 , 58 , 66 , 67 , 70 , 81 , 83 , 84 ]. These economic-related pathways overlap and interact in such a way that they may result in depression, anxiety, and suicide [ 53 , 61 , 62 , 76 , 78 , 79 , 81 , 85 , 86 ]. Evidence also shows that the more severe the drought and its impacts upon livelihoods, the larger the negative impacts upon the mental health for those affected [ 54 , 62 , 87 ]. The intermediary factors and outcomes associated with the economic pathway are shown in Figure 3 and Figure 4 , respectively.

Intermediary factors of economic pathway.

Mental health outcomes of economic effects of drought.

Looking at the pathway from a different angle, the migratory effects of drought also have implications for mental health that are well supported in the literature, with the systematic review identifying 28 papers related to this pathway. Migration away from drought-stricken communities with depressed economies can lead to a reduction in community resources, services, and support systems [ 45 , 52 , 54 , 56 , 61 , 70 , 76 , 88 ]. Altered family and community structures coupled with social and geographical isolation can also be issues for those who emigrate and those left behind, and may lead to symptoms of anxiety and depression [ 50 , 53 , 58 , 67 , 72 ]. Poor reception of immigrants by receiving communities has been observed [ 73 , 89 , 90 , 91 ]. A feedback loop may be of particular concern in this situation, with drought spurring migration and contributing to the erosion of the resource base, which in turn amplifies the effects of drought upon the community and pushes more people to leave. In such a case, a lack of resources is not only caused by drought, but is also an issue that makes drought more difficult to cope with [ 56 ]. Figure 5 focuses on the migratory effects pathway.

Migratory effects of drought upon mental health.

There is also evidence that drought can lead to environmental degradation of one’s home, affecting people’s ability to interact with their environment and causing additional issues related to rupture of place bonds, culture change and loss, and altered community and family dynamics [ 49 , 70 , 89 , 91 , 92 , 93 , 94 ]. These are particular issues for those who gain a strong sense of identity from the land and take on an environmental stewardship role [ 55 , 69 , 84 , 88 ]. Environmental degradation can also lead to changes in local and regional plants and wildlife, which may have downstream impacts for food security [ 63 , 69 ]. Such alternations in one’s way of life can contribute to depression and anxiety for individuals and tension within family and social networks [ 56 , 69 , 84 , 88 , 92 ]. The effects of environmental degradation of one’s home are depicted in Figure 6 .

Mental health outcomes related to the environmental degradation of one’s home.

The preceding diagrams on the economic, migratory and environmental degradation effects of drought can be combined into one overarching causal process diagram ( Figure 7 ) that shows how all of these individual components relate and overlap with one another. This highlights the highly interactive nature of the direct and indirect effects of drought and their resulting impact upon mental health.

Causal processes diagram for mental health outcomes of drought.

3.3. Vulnerabilities, Protective Factors, and Coping Strategies

Certain populations experience heightened risk of adverse mental health impacts from drought, while others have distinct protective factors and potential coping strategies. Important vulnerable populations, coping mechanisms, and protective factors found in the literature are presented in Table 2 .

As the diagram illustrates, there are a variety of different mechanisms through which drought can affect individuals, with certain populations being more vulnerable than others. For example, rural and remote populations face a unique set of challenges that increase their vulnerability. They are thus frequently studied; the systematic review found 32 articles that focused on rural individuals and communities. The circumstances of rural communities sometimes cause health to be defined differently, often with an emphasis on one’s ability to be productive and with distress seen more as a problem of daily living rather than a mental health issue [ 77 , 95 ]. Research has repeatedly demonstrated a phenomenon of rural stoicism that, combined with a culture of self-reliance, can interfere with help-seeking behaviors and limit effective adaptation to changed circumstances [ 44 , 77 , 96 , 97 ]. The social visibility present in small, rural communities can exacerbate reluctance to seek assistance for mental health problems [ 79 , 96 , 97 , 98 , 99 ]. Individuals who may consider pursuing mental health services are afraid of marginalization if others find out. Finally, compounding all of these problems is the lack, or perceived lack, of community resources and infrastructure in remote areas [ 44 , 47 , 56 , 71 , 75 , 95 , 98 , 100 ]. If individuals do not believe there are mental health services available to them, these resources will not be utilized.

Rural communities often include farming populations, another well-studied group. The systematic review revealed 22 articles that focused on the mental health outcomes of farmers and their families. Farming populations face many of the same challenges described for rural and remote populations, including declining population density, a lack of mental health services, and stigma surrounding mental health issues. Added to these issues is the fact that drought directly impacts the employment and economic success of agricultural communities [ 26 , 47 ]. Rural male farmers, who are particularly well studied, have several distinct risk factors [ 44 , 45 , 101 , 102 , 103 ]. Masculine hegemony dictates that men be emotionally tough, stoic in the face of adversity, and the breadwinners of the family [ 44 , 45 , 53 ]. These normative stereotypes harm help-seeking behaviors. Furthermore, the stigma associated with mental health issues is reinforced by the paradigm of masculinity found in farming [ 47 , 75 , 99 , 101 , 103 ]. Similarly, some studies of women in rural and farming communities have found heightened vulnerability due to their roles as caregivers and household managers, and the additional stresses associated with those responsibilities [ 48 , 95 , 96 ]. However, complicating this finding are the results of two studies that found either no heath effect or declined risk of suicide for females as drought increases [ 87 , 104 ]. This indicates there may be a more complex causal pathway involving gender, which modifies the effects of drought.

Due to their often strong connection with the land, indigenous groups are also particularly vulnerable [ 47 , 55 , 69 , 84 , 95 ]. Sustaining a relationship with the land in the face of drought is challenging, and as the climate continues to change, individuals will likely have a harder time maintaining their way of life [ 84 ]. This can lead to acculturation by forcing people to change their traditional ways of living and make individuals more vulnerable to mental health issues [ 93 ].

While the geographic and social isolation of rural and farming communities can increase vulnerability, having a strong sense of belonging, maintaining social capital, and utilizing those connections can serve as protective factors and coping mechanisms [ 43 , 56 , 100 , 102 , 103 , 105 , 106 , 107 ]. Protective social interactions can be at an individual or communal level [ 25 , 101 ]. Oftentimes small, rural populations are able to maintain a sense of community and informal support networks that can be utilized to address mental health issues; however, as drought conditions worsen these ties are strained and can break down due to prolonged pressure on community resources [ 70 , 101 , 108 , 109 ].

Practical solutions like farming adaptations were often cited as a way to cope with drought difficulties. Historically, farmers have changed farming practices during times of drought, and innovations such as land diversification and farm expansion are still used today [ 60 , 71 , 108 ]. Economic and lifestyle planning such that retirement and future generations would not be jeopardized by a failing farm was another way individuals were able to practically cope with drought [ 108 , 110 ].

However, not all coping mechanisms confer long-term advantage. In some situations avoidance and denial of the problem is common [ 56 , 91 , 108 ]. Although it is not always the main strategy, substance and alcohol abuse were cited in several studies as a way in which individuals dealt with the stressful situations caused by drought [ 44 , 58 , 84 , 85 , 107 ], particularly among males [ 81 , 107 , 111 ].

Mental health literacy has been identified as a protective factor and a way to reduce stigma by increasing knowledge and increasing help-seeking behaviors [ 97 ]. Providing information about mental health problems and services is also an important way to empower individuals to get through tough times [ 25 , 101 ]. Finally, the presence of government initiatives to assist during times of drought, either financially or through mental health outreach programs, may be protective as well [ 25 , 55 , 71 , 97 , 112 ]. However, it is important for such initiatives to be easily navigable and culturally appropriate [ 79 , 97 ].

4. Discussion

There is a growing need for public health practitioners and researchers to understand drought’s health impacts. Our review suggests several pathways for drought to adversely affect mental health, particularly among vulnerable populations. Some pathways were supported by more evidence than others. The economic effects pathway, particularly its impacts on rural farming populations, as well as the migration pathway, were well supported. The environmental degradation pathway had less support. This pathway is perhaps most relevant to indigenous populations, a potentially vulnerable group, and more research should be done to examine the strength of the postulated relationships.

The retrieved literature used a variety of methodologies. Qualitative and quantitative methods were used with nearly the same frequency, while a smaller portion used a mixed methods approach. Choice of methodology is important when looking to develop a detailed understanding of a complex phenomenon. Typically, qualitative methods are able to collect rich data that provide an in-depth understanding of research issues that embrace the perspectives of the study population and the context of their specific demographics. Quantitative methods have the advantage of allowing for numeric risk estimates that can be used to perform scenario-based health impact projections, which have become a mainstay of climate-health research. There was little quantitative estimation of the risks drought poses for the incidence of adverse mental health effects in the literature identified. In trying to develop an understanding of the casual relationship between drought and mental health that can be meaningful for a wide range of individuals, mixed methods approaches offer the ability to take advantage of the strengths of both quantitative and qualitative approaches.

There was a high degree of concordance among the identified literature leaving a strong impression of increased risk for adverse mental health impacts associated with drought. However, there were studies found in the systematic review that did not lend support to some of the relationships postulated in other literature. Guiney [ 113 ] examined intentional self-harm deaths of farmers in relation to prolonged droughts in Victoria, Australia and found no pattern of increasing farming suicides during the drought years. The findings of study are hampered though because it did not include a non-drought comparison to serve as a baseline for comparison. Furthermore, the paper does not account for the Australian gun control policy which was introduced at the start of the study period and is credited with reducing suicide risk by a large amount [ 114 ]. The author also acknowledges that community support programs targeting drought-affected areas may have contributed to improved outcomes during the time period in question. In another study, Powers et al. [ 104 ], found that adverse climate events did not appear to affect Australian women’s health and well-being. This relationship has been confirmed across other studies and complicates the proposed relationship between drought and mental health [ 87 , 115 ]. However, occupation is not explicitly examined in these studies, which may play an important role in the female experience of drought. Further study of the posited relationship with a focus on gender and occupation is therefore warranted. It is also worth noting that Powers et al. [ 104 ] suggest that the multiple resources available in high income counties, as well as tendencies for preparation and adaptation, may be responsible for mitigating some of the health impacts of adverse climate events like drought. This upholds the assertion that community support and preparedness may be able to offset the negative mental health impacts of drought.

This study had several limitations. First, the systematic review may have inadvertently missed publications, particularly those in the grey literature. Second, the relationships diagrammed are limited to those identified in the literature, though there are other ways in which drought might affect mental health. Third, physical health effects and their relation to mental health are underrepresented in the diagram, leaving questions about their role in the causal process. Fourth, some of the findings may not be generalizable, particularly due to cultural differences in the definitions of mental health. Lastly, it is also possible that unexamined factors may complicate the associations posited in the diagram. One plausible example of this could be pesticide exposure, which could act as a causal intermediary or confounder depending on whether pesticides are part of the proposed causal pathway under study. Drought may increase the use of pesticides or change people’s exposure to them, and these could have physical and neuroendocrine effects that could have implications for mental health [ 116 , 117 ]. However, pesticide exposure was not explicitly considered in the studies collected by the systematic review. A future study looking at the mental health effects of drought among a farming population using pesticides should consider whether pesticides may be part of the causal pathway under study and, if not, treat pesticide exposure as a potential confounder.

4.1. Application of the Causal Process Diagram

A note of caution related to linear interpretation of the causal diagram is in order. Perry [ 43 ] wrote that simple, uni-causal models are not particularly useful for understanding the physiological consequences of natural disasters. Instead, disasters should be seen as a contributory cause—one of a number of factors that together determine psychological consequences. Keeping this in mind when considering the relationships between drought and mental health underlines the importance of multiple pathways and nodes as much as the linear process suggested by the different pathways.

Despite its limitations, the causal process diagram has several potential applications, including prevention planning, public health programming, vulnerability and risk assessment, and research question development.

4.1.1. Prevention Planning

The diagram can be used by public health practitioners or extension workers in order to look for upstream warning signs of mental health issues associated with drought. This could be particularly relevant in the case of feedback loops, where there is interplay between drought-related stressors, coping or adaptation strategies, and downstream impacts. For example, in the current California drought, farmers have taken to pumping groundwater to cope with surface water losses [ 118 ]. As groundwater levels deplete, pumping costs will increase and may be subject to limits [ 118 ]. This could further threaten agricultural production and amplify drought-related stressors. The causal diagram can help identify strategies that anticipate such feedbacks and thereby promote adaptive strategies over short-term coping efforts.

4.1.2. Public Health Programming

The diagram offers a useful approach to examining interactions among stressors and impacts, which could be valuable when developing programs or interventions for communities. The literature review revealed that several mental health initiatives related to drought have already been implemented across the globe with varying degrees of success [ 25 , 34 , 43 , 52 , 68 , 80 , 85 , 112 ]. Adapting successful interventions using the causal process diagram could be another practical use of this research.

4.1.3. Vulnerability and Risk Assessment

Public health has often used environmental risk assessment to estimate human exposure to harmful or toxic substances; these methods have been expanded over recent years to estimate adverse effects of climate change, as seen in the methods used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [ 119 ]. This concept of analyzing possible impact from an environmental change can be applied to causal process between drought and health. The diagram and complementary table highlight areas of exposure and characteristics that make individuals particularly vulnerable to drought. This information can be used to inform vulnerability and risk assessments, allowing for the characterization of risk to the exposed populations.

4.1.4. Future Research

In addition to practical applications, the diagram can be used to generate research questions exploring the mental health impacts of drought effect and potential interventions for averting or mitigating these impacts. By providing a way to conceptualize causal processes, the diagram can both inform and guide research. To assist in this approach, a list of available data sources have been compiled that can be used to quantitatively explore the posited relationships in the causal process diagram ( Table 3 ). Much of this data is publically available, and the list is not exhaustive. The focus is primarily on data relevant to US populations, as this is the context with which the authors are most familiar, and there are likely other data sources in other regions that are worth exploring.

Suggested Data Sources for Future Research.

5. Conclusions

Given the current drought situation affecting parts of the United States and increasing concern over the association between climate change and drought, the linkages between drought and mental health are increasingly important. There is a substantial body of literature on the topic that allows for identification of several distinct and inter-related pathways by which drought can adversely impact mental health as well as several coping and adaptation strategies. Most of these relationships are mediated through environmental or economic pathways, and the outcomes most closely studied are mood disorders and, to a lesser degree, intimate partner violence and suicide. Few associations between drought exposure and adverse mental health outcomes have been quantified. This research is an initial step in bringing this important issue forward and outlining possible implications for prevention, mental health services, and future research.

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by NOAA through the Cooperative Institute for Climate and Satellites—North Carolina under Cooperative Agreement NA14NES432003.

Author Contributions

Holly Vins and Jesse Bell conceived the study and all authors developed the approach. Holly Vins conducted the literature review and conducted preliminary analysis. Holly Vins and Jeremy Hess participated in additional data analysis. Holly Vins drafted the paper and all authors participated in revisions.

Conflicts of Interest

The funding sponsor had no role in the design of the study; in the collection, analysis, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript; or in the decision to publish the results. Jeremy Hess and Shubhayu Saha declare that they have served as scientific consultants to the Natural Resources Defense Council. Jeremy Hess declares that he has served as a scientific consultant to Stratus Consulting. The authors have no other potential conflicts of interest to declare.

The findings and conclusions in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

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Bibliographic review on drought and water level articles

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• Published: 21 September 2023
• Volume 3 , article number  17 , ( 2023 )

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• Kemal Adem Abdela 1 , 5 ,
• Aragaw Fantabil 2 ,
• Dereba Muleta 3 ,
• Tamirat Yohannes 4 &
• Kazora Jonah 4  

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This bibliographic article on Drought and Water Level examined the relationship between organizations, nations, institutions, authors, references, and publishers. It examined 742 papers from Web of Science at the Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology’s. The total annual publication volume of articles was increased steadily from 2012 to 2021, with China and the United States ranking first and second in terms of publication volume and citations but in quality Switzerland and England were top-level. Institutional-partnership analyses indicated disparities in network density and connections, with the Chinese Academy of Sciences (2012) receiving the highest citations and degrees. The document co-citation analysis (DCA) network was created to improve understanding of the frequency and amplitude of bursts of various publications in separate clusters. The most cited work was J Hydrol (2012), with 302 citations. The analytical tool from CiteSpace collected high-frequency keywords and performed co-occurrence, grouping, and emerging word recognition. Gorges Dam is the most crowded cluster, followed by drought stress. The greatest burst duration and most significant phrase is reservoir (2019), followed by “water quality,” which has a 5 year burst period. Estuaries perform important functions such as water purification and coastal. “Reservoir, water quality, restoration, phytoplankton, temperature, wetland, time series, diversity and carbon dioxide” are the most important terms, while “climate change, drought, water level, impact, growth, variability, response, dynamics, management and model” are the most frequently used keywords. In terms of citations, references, and academic influence, Zhang Q. (2012), the R Core team (2014), and Jappen E. (2015) were the top three contributors. Cook, ER (2013), and Allen, R.G. (2019) ranked first and second in terms of frequency, respectively. In this review work, significant information gaps were discovered in the areas of microbiological dynamics, environmental variables, fen peat incubation, lake water, drought risk reduction, biological ecology, lake acidification, salinity variations, and attribution. Future researchers should focus on these and similar topics, while Chinese and USA authors should concentrate on article quality rather than publishing numbers.

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1 Introduction

Drought is a frequent feature of most parts of the world’s climate. It is characterized by drier-than-normal conditions that can last for days, months, or years [ 1 , 2 ]. Its consequences are classified as environmental, economic, and social. Dryer wetlands, wildfires, biodiversity loss, disruption of municipal water supplies, lower agricultural, forest, and fishery outputs, increased food production costs, and concerns about water supply for the energy sector are among the environmental consequences [ 3 , 4 ]. Currently water shortages, and low water levels are all economic and health consequences [ 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 ]. Drought is caused by geophysical processes as well as a human activity, and it is becoming more often as the climate warms [ 9 , 10 ].

A drought is a period of abnormally dry weather that generates water-related problems. It is classified into three types: meteorological, agricultural, and hydrologic. It is unusual for one type of drought to be more severe than another during a period of water constraint. A prolonged dry season throughout the summer may impair agricultural production while having no influence on groundwater storage replenished the previous spring [ 11 , 12 ]

The presence of water influences the hydrology of the soil, changing its chemical composition, quantity, and microbiological interactions [ 13 , 14 ]. Global climate systems have undergone an unparalleled transformation. Each of the last three decades has seen a warmer climate on the surface of the world. Climate change can have an influence on the water level, as well as the biogeochemistry and function of the land.

Water is the biggest terrestrial organic carbon reservoir, and its severity has a substantial influence on drought severity. Forecasting dammed water levels is critical for evaluating dam concerns such as water quality, biodiversity conservation, flood control, and hydropower generation optimization. Time-regular handling, symmetrical observational functions, error adjustment-based anticipating, multivariate techniques, and outfit-based algorithms are examples of computational procedures [ 15 ].

Groundwater is a significant natural resource, accounting for 33% of the global water supply. When there is less rainfall than usual, the flow of streams and rivers decreases, water levels in lakes and reservoirs drop, and the depth of water in wells increases. Droughts, seasonal fluctuations in rainfall, and pumping all have an impact on groundwater levels. Water levels in a well can be reduced if it is pumped faster than the aquifer surrounding it [ 16 ]. It is refilled by precipitation or another subsurface movement [ 17 , 18 ]. A well is considered to be dry when the water level falls below the pump input. The absence of rain has a more direct effect on wells screened in unconfined water table aquifers than on those screened in deeper, confined aquifers [ 19 ]. Flooding is the most common natural catastrophe in the United States, and it is produced by rain, snow, coastal storms, storm surges, and dam overflows.

Climate change, drought, temperature, rainfall intensity, and extreme weather events all have an effect on water levels, modifying wetland biogeochemistry and function while also influencing hydrology and temperature [ 20 ]. Wetlands may become carbon sources due to greater microbial activity, quicker photosynthesis, and higher rates of nitrification and denitrification, potentially making important services inefficient [ 21 ].

Droughts and water levels are predicted to become major global challenges, affecting climate change and people all over the world. Their connection and influence on one another is of tremendous scientific interest [ 22 , 23 ]. Droughts and water shortage have a substantial influence on the global economy, impacting consumer prices and energy expenditures. They have the ability to stymie economic progress, promote migration, and spark war. Droughts destabilize communities, provoke civil upheaval, and exacerbate water shortages and food hardship. The destruction of vegetation and tree cover exacerbates soil erosion and lowers groundwater recharge, creating water shortages and food poverty [ 24 , 25 ].

This review of the scientific literature aims to identify gaps in the present research and give recommendations to future scientists. It will examine articles on drought and water levels topics and evaluate the decade’s strengths and shortcomings in institutions, keywords, authors, journals, and collaboration. It also provides future study areas. It would assist programmers, researchers, and institutions in identifying particular areas for collaboration and cooperation to address global drought and water level challenges.

2 Methodology

2.1 data collection method.

For this bibliographic study, the fundamental data collection was done at the Web of Science database at Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology [ 20 , 26 ]. The search topic was set to ((“drought”) AND (“water level” OR “water shortage”)). Search results in 961 at ((“drought”) AND (“water level”)) (Topic)—961—All Databases (webofscience.com) . The study was started early, in 1969 (1 article). Invalid items, such as conference documents, government documents, news, and other language articles were removed. The time range of data was “2012–2022” “English” was the language, and “Article” was the document type selected (Table 1 ). The Web of Science database returned 742 articles after filtering ((“drought”) AND (“water level”)) (Topic)—742—All Databases (webofscience.com) . The findings were saved as “ plain text files ” and analyzed by Citescpce software (v.6.1. R6) as web of science .

2.2 Bibliometric analysis

A quantitative analysis of articles on a particular topic is known as bibliometric analysis. To find emerging themes and potential trends, it may do quantitative statistical analysis on a large number of peer-reviewed publications, network analysis, temporal analysis of document citation bursts, and keyword co-occurrence analysis [ 20 ]. CiteSpace is a popular bibliometric analytic tool [ 27 ]. It visually maps, explores, examines, organizes, and exposes the knowledge domain at a macro level. This approach is critical for identifying hotspots, understanding the changing trend in this field of study, and shedding light on future research fields. Computer software has attracted the interest of academics in a variety of sectors and is widely used [ 20 ].

Bibliometric citespace analysis is widely used in literature research in certain fields. Among a series of visual analysis tools, the CiteSpace (V.6.1. R6). The internal relationship between documents can be intuitively displayed through constructing a knowledge map, which helps enhance the abstract cognition of the relevant research status [ 28 ].

The number of published articles in the web of science (WoS) databases on the topics of drought and water level from 2012 to 2022 was plotted to examine and summarized its change-related tendencies [ 29 ]. To identify how research domains are based on high-frequency terms, keyword co-occurrence analysis was employed. To summarize the frequency and intensity of collaboration, the research cooperation network was evaluated for the major research nations, institutions, authors and burst detection function was utilized to identify research trends and frontiers as well as to forecast future research development paths [ 30 ].

2.3 Bursts, trends, and their influence

Burstness is a measure of an entity’s pace of change over time [ 31 ]. Citation burst and occurrence burst are both supported in CiteSpace. A high burstiness node usually represents a potentially interesting work that has received a lot of attention in a short period of time. CiteSpace is intended to offload some of the previously time-consuming tasks to computer algorithms and interactive visualizations, allowing human users to focus on problem-solving and truth-finding [ 27 ]. To do this, we used the “multiple-perspective co-citation analysis” approach, which included structural, temporal, and semantic pattern analysis [ 32 ].

2.4 Nodes assortment

The g-index is the most commonly suggested strategy for node selection. The 1 year per slice technique utilized in this study picked the most cited articles from each slice to create a network based on the user-specified input value and node type [ 33 ]. We used k = 20 and several node kinds, so the top 20 most referenced things were presented and rated. The g-index per slice procedure indicated the proportion of most cited items based on a fixed value.

2.5 Network development

The web of science (WoS) dataset was used to construct co-citation networks for authors and publications for network development [ 27 ]. Following Chen et. [ 32 ], trend research publication (Fig.  1 ), countries analysis (Fig.  2 ), institute co-citation (Fig.  3 ), author co-citation analysis (Fig.  4 ) [ 34 ], document co-citation analysis (DCA), journal co-citation analysis (JCA) (Fig.  5 ), and keyword analysis (Fig.  6 ) were performed to cluster co-citing authors [ 30 , 35 ], and dual map overlay (Fig.  7 ).

Trends, research area and publishers in drought and water level articles A . trends of articles per year from January 2012 to December 31, 2022, and citation B , major research areas studied in drought and water level tops C , Top 5 publishers on drought and water level from 2012 to 2022

Countries or regions analysis result, N = 88, E = 351, Q = 0.4464, S = .8125, Density = 0.0917, cluster = 8, a . Top 10 Countries in publications numbers b . four highest publication countries 10 years’ trends, c , d . countries clustering

Analysis of Major Research Institutions, N = 263, E = 198, Q = 0.8441, S = 0.982, Density = 0.0057, cluster = 131 [ 34 ]. a . Highest citation institutes, b . Institutions study cluster, c . Tree structure of institute trend rank

Top 10 Cited authors with the strongest citation Bursts and clustering, N = 488, E = 2187, Q = 0.6904, S = 0.8577, Density = 0.0184. A. Top Author in B. tree ring history of authors, and cluster view of influential authors

Sample publication bursts computed via journal co-citation analysis (JCA) Q = 0.4164; silhouette = 0.822), density 0.0811 [ 54 ] a . Top Journal Co-Citation Analysis (JCA) clustering and major journal citation b . tree time citation view

Sample keyword cluster and time analysis Q = 0.3741; silhouette = 0.754), density 0.034, a keywords, b VOSview of key words and c tree citation on timeline

The dual-map overlay generated by CiteSpace ( Chen, 2016a )

To explore network and cluster characteristics, temporal and structural metrics were used. The burstiness and degree of citations are temporal measures. It was critical for citation analysis to know if the citation count of a certain reference increased and when the increase happened. Burst detection identified whether or not the variations for a particular frequency function during a given time period were significant. We employed structural measures to quantify the level of uncertainty in a cluster, such as the average silhouette score [ 36 , 37 ], and modularity Q [ 38 ]. These criteria are useful for discovering famous scientific articles since they signify potentially groundbreaking material.

2.6 Visualization and labeling of clusters

To locate clusters and their interactions, we employed the multidimensional clustering approach. Two visualization approaches the timeline view and the cluster was utilized [ 39 ]. The cluster view allowed nodes to have vertical links with nodes in various time zones, whereas the timeline view was made up of vertical lines representing time zones chronologically sorted from left to right. We also used the log-likelihood ratio (LLR) technique to automatically extract cluster labels, which delivers the best results in terms of originality and coverage [ 32 , 40 ].

2.7 The dual-map overlay

CiteSpace was utilized to create a dual-map overlay [ 41 ] in this study, which exhibited a first base map of citing journals and a second base map of citing journals in the same user interface [ 39 ]. Trajectories were then built from the citing and referenced journals to offer a more complete picture of the citations. The blondel technique [ 42 ] was used to allocate these journals to a cluster, allowing access to community networks with varied community detection resolutions [ 30 ] (Fig.  7 ). This enabled us to look into inter-specialty linkages and citation trends across a variety of publications [ 40 ].

3.1 Analysis of research trend

Based on a review of 742 papers published between 2012 and 2022 on the topic of “drought and water level,” there were a total of 9,964 citations recorded in the Web of Science Core Collection (WoSCC) database [ 43 ].

The trend in changes in the number of published papers, including the number and the growth rate, reflects the relationship between the number of published papers and changes over time; it was an important indicator for measuring the attention of scholars to a particular research field. It also reflects the overall progress of research in this domain [ 29 ]. The annual volume of article publishing increased steadily from 2012 to 2021, then fell in 2022. Prior to 2020, there were less than a hundred publications every year. In 2021, the publishing volume was 106 articles per year, the greatest publication output per year which was lower than it had been in 2021. The number of references mentioned more than doubled from 2192 (2012) to 5821 (Fig.  1 A). Despite the fact that the research fields are always shifting, environmental science (330) and water resources (200) have consistently accounted for more than 71% of the overall study over the past ten years. Among others subjects covered in this topic are geology (159), marine and freshwater biology (114), engineering (78), plant science (51), and agriculture (46) (Fig.  1 B). The top three publishers of publications on drought and water levels were Elsevier (183), Springer Nature (171), and MDPI (77). About 58% of all publications on this topic were published by these publishers (Fig.  1 C).

3.2 Network evaluation of researcher collaboration

3.2.1 an assessment of research countries.

The Investigation of the national collaboration network has offered a fresh viewpoint on how nation’' academic effects might be quantified as a result of their research. CiteSpace was used to produce a map of national cooperative ties based on the time slice chosen for analysing the WoS literature data, and the node type was set to ‘‘country’’ 1 year was chosen as the time slice for examining the WoS literature data. It resulted in 88 nodes and 355 link lines, a network density of 0.0917, modularity of 0.3714, and Silhouette of 0.7503. This demonstrates that nations or regions are well connected. In research projects focusing on "drought and water level issues’’ 88 countries or regions (96%) contributed (Fig.  2 ).

The People’s Republic of China came in first place with 3245 citations in 2012, followed by the United States with 2913 citations (Fig.  2 a). Over the course of the research period, the quantity of Chinese articles in the web of science (WoS) database has increased significantly. From 2012 to 2022, there was a rise in publication articles in China (30), with a peak in 2019 and the USA (16) in (2022). It illustrates the quick development of science. China and the United States produced the most notable research findings on drought and water level, which call for the active participation and collaboration of other countries or regions (Fig.  2 b, c). Water level management and case study clusters were biggest cluster in countries keyword. It shows China and USA mostly focused on case study cluster. After 2020, there will still be a research shortage on themes related to water level and drought control (Fig.  2 d).

According to the data shown below, Switzerland (2015) had the most bursts in 2018, with 3.36 bursts. England (2012) came in second with 3.04 brusts. Australia (2016) and Singapore (2014) continue to have the hottest bursts and longest burst durations (Table 2 ). In contrast, the highest degree rating was achieved by England (2012), with a degree of 31 in comparison to the rest of the world’s countries. In terms of citation China (2012) was the top ranked by 192 citations, followed by United States of America (2012) ranks second in the world by 135 citations (Table 3 ).

3.3 Analysis of major research institutions

The number of publications and the collaborative network of research institutes are important markers. It directly reflects the academic focus and overall strength of research institutes. One year was chosen as the time slice. The node type "institution” was chosen, and the Pathfinder tool was used for trimming and merging [ 44 , 45 ]. CiteSpace was used, and the result was an institution partnership graph with a network density of 0.0057 and link 198. Figure  3 depicts the discovery of 263 nodes, 198 lines, and 131 clusters. The silhouette was 0.9820 and the modularity was 0.8441. The link was quite strong. It demonstrates that research institutions commonly exchange and cooperate on various fields of study, but there is a gap in salinity variability investigations, attribution studies, and macro ecological patterns Islamic Azad University collaborates efficiently with Chinese universities [ 46 ] (Fig.  3 a). The Chinese Academy of Sciences (2012) was the most cited item in this institution’s publications, with 71 citations and 32 degrees. University Chinese Academic Science (2014) came in second, with 28 citations and 10 degrees (Table 4 ).

3.4 Author co-citation analysis

The number of publications and collaboration networks reflect the expert’’ academic talent, level of cooperation, and overall academic importance. The author’' cooperation network graph had a network density of 0.0184, with 488 nodes and 435 connections. The ACA network's modularity Q score was 0.6904, indicating moderately well-structured networks and clusters. The average silhouette score was 0.8577, suggesting that the cluster was varied and frequently mentioned [ 40 ].

Deo RC, Zhang Q and Yang had the most publications in the water level and drought topics each of them has 7 (Fig.  4 a). There are 38 clusters in the authors' citations, 10 of which are interesting and listed under. The most populous writers’ references cluster, with a silhouette value of 0.698, were Gorges dam containing Anonymous, IPCC, and Jeppesen E, who were the most often cited members. They also called shallow lake or salinity fluctuation team. In this cluster, Anonymous (2012) obtained the most citations and degree [ 47 ] which is the cluster's most cited publication with 251 citations and highest degree (43), But Cooker (2013) (strength = 4.43), whose business launched in 2013 and continues to expand in 2015, was the top-ranked item by bursts, followed by Allen R.G. (strength = 4.02, 2019–2022) (Table 5 ). Notably, Allen R. G. (2019) had the longest-lasting burst with a period of 4 years and is presently the most-cited The analysis indicates the gap of current study areas like decline water level, hydrological alternatives, lake water management and harmful cyanobacteria. The rapid fluctuations in the number of citations collected throughout the stipulated timeframe showed the writer’' writings and ideas becoming more relevant. Generally, Zhang Q (2012, 2014), Jeppesen E (2015), R Core Team (2014) were influential authors. water level variation was host study topic while there is gaps substratum and mobilising citizen scientist clusters (Fig.  4 b).

3.5 Document co-citation analysis (DCA)

A cluster view and a timeline view were used to examine the document co-citation analysis (DCA) network. Clusters were rated in order of size, with cluster #0 being the biggest. The size of the circle represented the influence of the publication, with larger circles signifying more citations. The red tree rings denoted the author's publication's brevity [ 48 ]. The DCA analysis discovered 56 clusters, the biggest of which (#0) had 48 members and a silhouette value of 0.901. It is referred to as the Gorges Dam and the Subsequent Response. Zhang Q, Guo H, and Zhang ZX are the most mentioned members. Wang, J (2014) is the most frequently cited paper in the cluster [ 49 , 50 ]. Zhang Q (2014) is the top-ranked author by degree (30). But he was second by a burst of 4.06 and citation) after Guo H’s (2012) strength of burst of 4.24 with citation counts of 24. A high degree of between ness suggested that the articles in the table linked two or more clusters. Since they connected multiple topics, they were also likely to be a synthesis of different concepts into a new one, and maybe revolutionary in offering this connection [ 51 ]. As previously stated, higher degree values indicated the novelty of these publications [ 40 , 52 ]. Alizadeh-Choobari (2016) was current timely hot references from 2020 to 2022 (Table 6 ).

3.6 Journal co-citation analysis (JCA)

According to the statistics, the most co-cited journals are Journal of Water (43), and Hydrology (29) (Fig.  5 ) [ 29 ]. It has 384 nodes and 3422 connections in 18 clusters. There were several high-frequency keyword nodes, and the network density was 0.0465. The network was thick, with many connections between nodes. Taking into account the quantity of phrases, frequency of recurrence, and centrality between them [ 40 ]. With modularity Q scores of 0.436 and an average silhouette score of 0.8297, the JCA network exhibits strong interaction and frequency. Science, water resources, hydrobiology, ecology, and freshwater biology are among the most referenced periodicals (Fig.  5 a).

The biggest cluster (#0), identified as Poyang lake, and Brisbane Australia, has 136 members with a silhouette value of 0.833. It is mostly cited in the journals J. Hydrol, Water Resources, and Res and Science. With 107 members and a silhouette value of 0.82, the second biggest cluster (#1) is dongting lake [ 53 ]. Currently there is gap on topic natural science in northern Atlantic cluster (Fig.  5 b). J Hydrol (2012) ranks top with 302 citations, Water Recourse Research (2012) has 223, and while Nature and Science (2012) has 344 and 337 highest degree (Table 7 ).

3.7 Keywords co-citation analysis

The keywords indicate the articles' study themes, contents, theories, methodologies, points of view, and other features. Cite Space’s analysis function can successfully extract high-frequency keywords, as well as conduct co-occurrence, clustering, and emerging word recognition [ 27 ]. After that, the study field can acquire topic clustering, as well as its distribution, scope, and sub-clustering [ 55 , 56 ]. To understand research hotspots and frontier advancements, publications is evaluated using keywords, emphasizing large clusters and citation-based indicators such as citation counts and bursts [ 57 ].

The clusters created influential ideas with high keyword strength. With a modality of 0.6998, a silhouette of 0.6835, and densities of 0.0345, the network comprises 352 nodes and 2131 linkages. The analysis produced keyword bursts [ 40 ]. The most frequently used key terms were climate change (181), drought (159), water level (125), impact (118), dynamic (101). There were gaps on keywords like land use, system and restoration diversity in this field (Fig. 6 a, b).

The bibliography mentions 15 prominent clusters, the greatest was Yangtze river cluster, which has 76 persons and a silhouette value of 0.648. It is a water level, impact, and unpredictability heterocyst development [ 58 ]. Drought Stress is Cluster #1, with 67 members and a silhouette value of 0.728. It is classed as heterocyst development and involves drought, growth, and response. The tree citation on timeline show gaps on clusters like species-rich fen and ground water level in this field. There is a scarcity of research on biological terrestrial concerns, lake acidification, salinity changes, and attribution [ 59 ] (Fig.  6 c). The most important bursts were ‘‘reservoir’’ (4.61) from 2019–2020, followed by ‘‘water quality’’ (3.72) and ‘‘restoration’’ (3.46) with a 4 year burst duration. The phrase ‘‘frequency and soil moisture’’ witnessed a 4 year hot burst from 2018 to 2022 (Table 8 ).

3.8 Dual-map overlay

Created a dual-map overlay, where the citing papers are on the left, the cited journals are on the right, and the citation connections identify the source journal. An understanding of inter-specialty interactions may be gained from the trajectory of the citation linkages. A change in trajectory from one region to another would suggest that papers from one field had an impact on the other [ 40 ]. It was clear that the major areas at the beginning of the trajectory were ecology, earth, marline, molecular, biology, immunology, veterinary and animal science. In contrast, the final leg of the trajectory was dominated by plant ecology, earth, geophysics, zoology, molecular, biology, genetics, environmental taxology and economics. The Fig.  7 ring shows inter connection of the right and left items in CiteSpace (Chen, 2016a).

4 Discussion

4.1 the drought and water level.

Drought is a global climatic concern defined by drier-than-normal conditions that linger for days, months, or years. It has environmental, economic, and societal implications, such as wetlands, wildfires, biodiversity loss, and water supply interruption [ 60 , 61 ]. Droughts are produced by geophysical causes as well as human activities, and their frequency is increasing as the climate warms. Droughts have an impact on groundwater, a valuable natural resource, and wetlands may become carbon sinks. Droughts and water scarcity are serious global concerns that impact climate change and people all over the world. Their relationship piques scientific curiosity [ 62 , 63 ].

According to several studies, water is the biggest terrestrial organic carbon storage [ 64 ]. Water supply change has a substantial impact on the severity of the drought. Water level changes are fundamental to many aspects, including climate change, environmental balance, and the necessary conservation measures that have been better taken. Deep learning methods have become increasingly important for predicting drought and water levels using remote sensing satellite imagery [ 65 , 66 ].

Unexpected warming or cooling of sea surface temperatures can induce a shift in air temperature, which can modify the position of the convection currents that generate weather patterns [ 67 , 68 ]. Heat draws moisture from the earth, causing it to form clouds and fall back to earth as rain. If weather patterns vary sufficiently to create a dry region, there is not enough moisture in the soil to pull up into the air and form clouds. Droughts can result, affecting crops, water supply, stream water quality, recreation, hydropower generation, navigation, and forest resources [ 69 ].

Water parts are very vulnerable to hydrological change, particularly when other sources of disturbance like climate change, pollution, urbanization, and land use accentuate this change [ 70 , 71 ].Water levels will always fluctuate since wetlands are frequently situated in an Eco-region where an aquatic and a terrestrial ecosystem coexist. In terms of environmental science and water resources, water is the most valuable. Unawareness of the possible ecological disasters that effects on some organisms may bring has impeded efforts [ 72 ].

This review paper data gathered information on ‘drought and water level’ from 2012 to 2022 using the Web of Science database at Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology. The data was analyzed using CiteSpace software to spot emerging themes and prospective trends. The study also used a research collaboration network and keyword co-occurrence analysis to count the number of publications published on drought and water level. The g-index approach was used to identify nodes, while burstiness was utilized to examine citation bursts and their impact. Co-citation networks for authors and articles were built using the Web of Science dataset, which improved network development.

It also reviews of prominent research institutes, as well as their publications and collaboration networks, demonstrates their academic concentration and strength. The Chinese Academy of Sciences (2012) received the most citations and degrees. Islamic Azad University works well with Chinese universities, with the Chinese Academy of Sciences being the most frequently mentioned. The author’s cooperation network graph had a low network density. The Gorges Dam cluster has the highest density of writers’ references. The results show gaps in current research areas such as declining water levels, hydrological alternatives, lake water management, and hazardous cyanobacteria.

4.2 Influential countries, institution authors, documents, keywords journals and dual-map overlay

This study used a variety of co-citation methodologies to investigate published articles to verify links and collaborations among countries, institutes, authors, journals, and keywords. The findings looked into how the number of authors, publication type, and journal choice affected the number of citations for “Drought and Water Level.” The most relevant variables were evaluated using generalized boosted regression tree (BRT) modelling and bibliometric network visualized [ 40 ]. The link between ‘Drought’ AND ‘water level’ and increase understanding in this subject. Moreover, show relevant research on the measurement and assessment of hydrologic models provides theoretical advice for countries to establish and improve frequency and co-operation of countries, institutions, authors, journals as well as accelerate the advancement of governmental and non-governmental organizations to show gap of study on these keywords [ 29 ]. This bibliographic review investigates the topic of "drought and water level" literature review. It emphasizes the significance of incorporating the complex interaction between Institution, countries, authors, references, and publishers [ 73 ].

We considered 742 works published between 2012 and 2022 in this study, with 9964 citing articles without self-citations, 9748 citing articles with self-citations, and 11,606 time of cited with self-citations. From 2012 through 2021, the number of papers produced each year increased steadily. The number of reference citations has more than doubled in the previous two years, from 2192 (2012) to 5821 (Fig.  1 a). According to our data, China and the United States lead the world in terms of publication volume and citations. However, their articles in this subject are of insufficient quality (Table 2 ). whereas Switzerland, England, Greece, Germany, and Brazil emphasized the quality of publications. Many European countries’ periodicals and institutions were confident and had high degree in quality of articles [ 74 ]. For the last 10 years, environmental science and water resources researches have regularly accounted for more than 71% of total researches (Fig.  1 b). Elsevier, Springer Nature, and MDPI were the top three publishers of works on drought and water levels. These publishers published around 58% of all articles on this topic (Fig.  1 c).

The country's study revealed 81 clusters, biggest cluster of country nodes was water level management. China and USA were most cited (Fig.  2 ). China is the most often mentioned nation members of the water level management cluster, which is the biggest by nation. Estuaries are essential for preventing climate change, protecting the shore, sequestering carbon, and purifying water. They are particularly vulnerable to extreme river flows and the sea level rising brought on by climate change. Sea level rise would worsen estuary hydrodynamics, having an influence on water level, currents, and salinity, according to the Yangtze River Estuary simulation performed utilizing integrated modeling approach [ 75 , 76 ]. Estuaries are crucial for climate change mitigation, coastal protection, water purification, and carbon sequestration. The paper ‘‘Integrated modeling analysis of estuarine responses to extreme hydrological events and sea-level rise’’ was ranked first by citation [ 77 , 78 ]. Switzerland (2015) had the highest burst, 3.36, and was the most significant. Second-placed was England. Australia and Singapore now host this industry. Knowledge gaps were examined with regard to monitoring drought attribution and microbial necromass input to soil organic carbon clusters [ 27 ] . In the institutional clustering, the first cluster (Case study) comprises 24 members. Most cited papers included ‘‘Salinity changes in the southern Australian Coorong lagoon,’’ ‘‘macroecological patterns of adaptability deduced from a global, coordinated experiment,’’ and ‘‘Integrated modeling analysis of estuarine responses to intense hydrological events and sea-level rise.’’ The impact of decreased water levels on phytoplankton dynamics in tropical semi-arid shallow lakes is covered in these studies [ 79 ].

The first cluster with 136 members in the author citation is Gorge Dam, the biggest cluster. Most papers in the cluster that received the most citations were "decrease in fishery yields in response to hydrological alterations in the largest floodplain lake (Poyang Lake) in China," and Mosley, LM (2014), ‘‘acidification of lake water due to drought.’’ These are three papers that discuss the effects of water level reduction on the dynamics of phytoplankton functional groups in tropical semi-arid shallow lakes. It is also called the ‘‘biogeochemistry of Mediterranean wetlands.’’ It includes J Hydrol (302), Water Resource Research (223), Science (207), and Hydrobiologia (209). The most cited article was ‘Estimation of renewable energy and built environment-related variables using neural networks.

The number of papers produced and the research institution collaboration network are important markers of a research institute's academic concentration and overall strength [ 80 ]. According to the findings of institution-partnership research, there are gaps in network density and links that are indicative of the institute's academic emphasis and overall strength. This demonstrates that many institutions are not working with one another and have minimal interaction with one another (Fig.  3 ). The Chinese Academy of Sciences (2012) was the most cited item in this institution's publications, with 71 citations and 32 degrees, followed by the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences (2014), with 28 citations and 10 degrees (Table 3 ) [ 81 ]. United States Department of the Interior and United States Geological Survey are top-rank strength institutes in our topic (by 3.98 burst). Even if collaboration of institute in this topic is weak Chinese institutes and Islamic Azad University were most co-operated in the studies areas of temporal dynamic drought interaction, case study, and changing environment. There is now a deficit in institution partnership research on salinity variation, micro ecological patterns, and attribute investigations (Fig.  3 A).

The authors' cooperation network graph depicts author connections. The network density of the author’s collaboration network graph was moderate while ACA network's modularity Q score was high because to its well-structured networks and clusters [ 82 ]. Author clusters shows the collaboration of writer at different field of studies. The most common writers were Zhang Q, (2012/14), R Core (2014) and Jeppesen E (2015) (Fig.  4 a). whereas the top-ranked references with the most citation bursts were Guo H, Zhang Q, Zhang ZX, Jeppesen E, and the R Core Team [ 83 , 84 ]. The frequent changes in the number of citations obtained within the time period specified indicated that writers' writings and ideas were becoming increasingly significant. Our analysis reveals gaps in current research areas such as declining water levels, hydrological alternatives, lake water management, and hazardous cyanobacteria (Fig.  4 b). Cooker (2013) was ranked top by Bursts, followed by Allen R.G. Allen R. G. (2019) had the longest burst, which lasted 4 years (Tables 4 ).

Journals with the highest number of citations include Journal of Water, Hydrology, Hydrobiology, and Science of the Total Environment were top ranked. The network density was modest, and there were a handful of high-frequency keyword nodes. The modularity Q scores for the JCA network were 0.436, while the average silhouette score was 0.8297. Water resources, Hydrobiology, Ecology, and Freshwater Biology are some of the most cited journals (Fig.  5 a) (Additional file 1: Table S1, S2, S3, S4, S5, S6, S7).

Results Found 384 nodes and 3422 linkage references to Citespace in the Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology Web of Science Core Collection Database on the topic of water level and drought. With a few high-frequency keyword nodes, the network density was medium. J Hydrol (2012) earned the most citations (302), while Nature (2012) received the greatest degree (344) in Poyang lake biggest claster (Fig.  5 b; Tables 6 ) [ 85 , 86 ].

The keyword climate change (139) and drought (129) highest citation keywords (Fig.  6 a) while ‘restoration’ had the greatest impact in Yangtze river cluster, followed by ‘water quality’ in shallow Mediterranean cluster in terms of burst (4.61, 3.71 respectively) (Fig.  6 b, Table 7 ). But. Furthermore, bibliographic coupling and citation networks exhibit a continental pattern [ 87 ].

George’s dam is the biggest cluster in document clustering. it has 136 members and a silhouette value of 0.833. The most cited paper is De Vicente I (2021), ‘‘Biogeochemistry of Mediterranean Wetlands’’ 302 J Hydrol, 223 Water Resource Res, 207 Sciences, 209 Hydrobiological, 167 Ecologies, 164 Freshwater Biology, 59 Drought Stress, 91 New Phytol, and 81 Plant Soil, are the most referenced members in this cluster. also reference cluster #0, designated as gorges dam, with 48 members. the most cited article being Rodrigues, E. (2018). Estimation of renewable energy and built environment-related variables using neural networks (Table 8 ) [ 88 ].

CiteSpace’s analytical tool gathers high-frequency keywords and conducts co-occurrence, clustering, and emerging word detection. This review considered topic clustering, distribution, breadth, and sub-clustering [ 89 ]. Keywords are used to identify topics, concepts, theories, techniques, and points of view in research. Gorges Dam has the most people, with 76 people and a silhouette value of 0.648. Drought Stress has a silhouette value of 0.728 and 67 persons. Keyword analysis identifies high-frequency phrases, summarizes, and enhances the literature in an effective manner. Reservoir (2019) has the longest burst time, followed by water quality, with a burst length of five years. Drought, climate change, and water level were all rated highly in 2012 (Tables 9 ) [ 90 ]. Keywords that currently has gap were shallow Mediterranean, species rich fen and drought stress (Fig.  6 ) [ 91 ].

The dual-map overlay was created to provide a map of WoS and its links to other academic areas. The left and right base maps shared subjects such as molecular biology and genetics on the right and molecular biology and immunology on the left, suggesting that these areas were connected. Publications in important subjects such as ecology, earth science, marine science, molecular biology, immunology, veterinary medicine, and animal science may have an impact on studies in other fields [ 92 , 93 , 94 ].

5 Conclusion finding and recommendations

Using generalized boosted regression tree (BRT) modelling, the most essential variables were discovered and shown. Citespace is used in this bibliographic research to emphasize the need of understanding the complicated relationship between organizations, nations, writers, references, and publishers.

The yearly publishing volume of publications on ‘‘Drought and Water Level’’ climbed gradually from 2012 to 2021, with China and the United States placing first and second in terms of volume and citations, while Switzerland and England ranked top in quality respectively. Analyses of institutional collaboration indicated differences in network density and linkages, with the Chinese Academy of Sciences garnering the most citations and degrees. Collaboration research discovered network density and link gaps, suggesting the institute's academic focus and general strength. To increase comprehension of bursts of publications in various clusters, a document co-citation analysis (DCA) network was built. J Hydrol (2012) had the most citations (302), while Thesis (2016) received 10.97.

The keyword reservoir (2019), followed by water quality (2014) had the biggest influence by burst (4.61and 3.72) respectively, although the most cited phrases and highest degree used keywords were climate change( 181 ) and drought ( 159 ) . The document co-citation analysis (DCA) network was built to understand the frequency and amplitude of bursts of various publications in separate clusters. Guo H, Zhang Q, Zhang ZX, Jeppesen E, and the R Core Team were the top-ranked references in terms of citation bursts. CiteSpace acquired 384 nodes and 3422 linkages from the WoS core collection database of literary data. The most cited work was J Hydrol (2012), which garnered 302 citations, while Thesis (2016) received 10.97 citations.

The analytical tool from CiteSpace collects popular keywords and performs co-occurrence, grouping, and emerging word recognition. The highest silhouette value, 0.728 for Gorges Dam, is followed by Drought Stress. The most crucial word, reservoir (2019), has the longest burst duration and is followed by "water quality" which has a five-year burst period. The terms with a current study need include shallow Mediterranean, species-rich fen, and drought stress. Wu W. (2021) writings on China are the most popular, having the most mentions of any country. Estuaries are essential for preventing climate change, protecting the shore, sequestering carbon, and purifying water.

Using several co-citation methodologies, this study examined published publications on ‘‘Drought and water level’’ between 2012 and 2022. In terms of publication volume and citations, China and the United States were the top two countries. CiteSpace’s analytical tool was used to analyzed the frequency and amplitude of bursts from distinct publications in discrete clusters. The most referenced article had 302 citations, with the most often used phrases being climate change and drought. After Gorges Dam, the cluster with the biggest population was drought stress.

The use of keywords might improve and simplify text. The dual-map overlay highlights the relationships between WoS and other academic fields while highlighting how ecological, earth, marine, molecular, and immunological sciences have an impact on other fields. In terms of citations, bursts, and frequency, the paper emphasizes the significance of article clusters, authors, publications, journals, and keywords. The importance of "drought and water level" model papers should be discussed in future research, and article methodologies should be improved.

The quality and collaboration of articles on drought and water levels have changed over the past 10 years due to variations in research intensity and burst among countries, regions, institutions, study subjects, keywords, authors, journals, affiliations, and titles. Switzerland ranked top in terms of research strength and burst, whereas China and the United States were in first and second place in terms of publishing. Case studies, temporal dynamics, drought interpretation, gorge dams, survey recovery, and water level management are some of the hot issues in environmental science right now.

Salinity variation attribute study macro ecological processes hydrological drought, water level change, hydrologic modelling, and soil moisture call for more focused future research subjects as well as international cooperation between authors, institutions, and nations. Phytoplankton, temperature, wetland, time series, diversity, and carbon dioxide are a few of the most important words looked at. The phrases ‘‘climate change’’ and ‘‘water level’’ were often used, along with ‘‘gaps in biological teratology’’, ‘‘salinity changes’’, ‘‘shallow lakes’’, ‘‘lake water’’ and ‘‘attribution’’.

Zhang Q. (2012), the R Core team (2014), and Jappen E. (2015) were the top three contributions in terms of citations, references, and academic impact. In terms of frequency, Allen, R.G. (2013) and Cook, ER (2013) were placed first and second, respectively. The most often used terms were found to be ‘‘water quality’’ and ‘‘restoration’’ however other phrases like ‘‘climate change’’, ‘‘drought’’, ‘‘growth ’’ and ‘‘dynamic’’ were also regularly utilized.

6.1 Recommendations

Significant knowledge gaps are identified in the areas of microbiological dynamics, environmental factors, fen peat incubation, lake water, drought risk reduction, watershed management, biological ecology, lake acidification, salinity changes, and attribution control mechanisms in this study. Future academicians should concentrate on these and similar topics, while Chinese and American authors should concentrate on their talents rather than their publishing numbers.

Data availability

The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available in the [Nanjing University of Information science and Technology Library] at (webofscience.com).

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to express their gratitude to Prof. ZhiGuo Yu and Dr. Amit Kumar for their encouragement for this work. The funding for this research came from the Chinese National Natural Science Foundation (grant numbers 41877337, 41601090). The authors acknowledge Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology key members of the Laboratory of Hydro Meteorological Disaster Mechanism and Warning for their assistance in completing our research.

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Abdela, K.A., Fantabil, A., Muleta, D. et al. Bibliographic review on drought and water level articles. Discov Water 3 , 17 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s43832-023-00038-w

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Enhancing resource allocation in drought mitigation through a group multicriteria sorting model: a case study of Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil

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Gabriel de Oliveira Castro , Danielle Costa Morais , Thomas Edson Espindola Gonçalo; Enhancing resource allocation in drought mitigation through a group multicriteria sorting model: a case study of Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil. Water Policy 2024; wp2024063. doi: https://doi.org/10.2166/wp.2024.063

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Drought is a natural phenomenon that poses a significant threat to water resources in affected regions. The detrimental effects of this extreme weather event, regardless of its type, have had an impact, necessitating concrete resource allocation projects to mitigate drought. From this perspective, our research proposes a group multicriteria sorting model to support resource allocation for drought mitigation. A multicriteria sorting model was developed based on the PROMSORT method to assist the government in evaluating 14 municipalities of the Apodi-Mossoró river basin in the Rio Grande do Norte State in Brazil. This model classifies the municipalities into high, moderate, and low-priority categories, enabling targeted attention and allocation of resources for drought mitigation efforts. The research findings demonstrate that the proposed model can effectively support strategic public policies, allocate resources, and facilitate the implementation of appropriate actions, thereby focusing efforts on the city's most severely affected by drought and alleviating the adverse effects of this natural disaster

We identified and sorted the cities most impacted by drought through group decision-making.

Structured approach for allocating public resources.

We facilitate to induce strategic public policies.

We consider the particularities of municipalities in the Brazilian semi-arid region.

We propose decision rules to generate a group decision.

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Land & Environment

Researchers: Drought-Busting Spring Rains May Slow in Future

By Lynnette Harris | April 18, 2024

The Colorado River Basin goes through periods of severe water shortage and also flooding, adding greater uncertainty to the already complex challenge of creating water policy. Some years water managers have rejoiced at the heavy precipitation that falls when a "miracle" month comes on the heels of drought. But drought-busting spring rains may slow in the future — to understand why, researchers first had to define a "miracle."

In early 2015, the Colorado River Basin was facing an unprecedented water shortage. Across the Mountain West, crops were withering, reservoir levels were falling, and state and local governments were imposing historic curtailments.

Come that spring, however, a nearly threefold increase in the basin’s average precipitation sent the river system from severe shortage to extreme flooding in a matter of weeks. Water managers rejoiced at the “Miracle May.”

Drought-busting “miracles” have been fodder for newspaper headlines for more than a century — popping up every decade or so when remarkably rainy springs bring an end to dismally dry winters. But these springtime deluges may become less frequent and less substantial under climate warming.

“There’s that old saying, ‘miracles never cease,’ but of course, these were always rare events, which is why they were called 'miracles' to begin with,” said Utah State University climate scientist Binod Pokharel, the lead author of a new paper on unforeseen, extreme springtime precipitation capable of abruptly ending prolonged droughts . “In the future, it seems these events might become fewer and farther between.”

To come to that conclusion, the researchers had to come up with a definition for something that is, by its nature, very hard to define.

“I’ve spent a good part of my life quantifying different sorts of clouds, which are obviously very nebulous things,” Pokharel said. “But miracles? That’s really hard."

The authors noted that a lot of folk wisdom has gone into identifying these sorts of events.

"You might say, ‘Well, the crops were dying and then there was a lot of rain, and that felt like a miracle.’ And of course, you’d be right," said study co-author Matthew LaPlante, an associate professor of journalism at Utah State and climate researcher whose related and recently published work focused on rare and unexpected extreme snowpacks in the Colorado River Basin . "But if we want to test whether there could be more or fewer of these extreme dry-to-wet transitions in the future, there need to be specific criteria.”

To develop those parameters, the study employed a co-production approach, bringing together scientists with water managers from around the West, several of whom went on to become co-authors of the study published in the Journal of the American Water Resources Association . Together, the scientists and local experts defined a “miracle” winter-to-spring transition as one in which four consecutive anomalously dry months are followed by at least three consecutive anomalously wet months. Those conditions were met in about 10 percent of all years since 1960.

Using multiple climate projection models, the researchers found the “miracle” events would be less likely under continued warming, but none of the scenarios suggested that the Colorado River Basin wouldn’t still benefit from the occasional drought-ending deluge through the end of the century.

James Eklund, a co-author of the paper and water policy adviser to state and local governments across the West, said these findings can help avoid “missed opportunities for water storage, groundwater recharge and maintenance of ecological flows."

In many cases around the globe, climate scientists have identified oceanic and atmospheric arrangements of temperature and pressure that often precede specific weather patterns by many months, allowing for stronger meteorological predictions.

The researchers in this study did not identify ways to better predict individual “miracle” springs. But Jake Serago, a co-author and water resource engineer for the Utah Department of Natural Resources, said great benefits can be derived from an improved assessment of the past and potential future periodicity of extreme dry-to-wet transitions.

"Understanding the likelihood of such 'miracle' events is important for the hydrologic prediction and water planning we do," Serago said.

Kripa Akila Jagannathan, a co-author and climate adaptation researcher at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory who specializes in co-production projects, said it was gratifying to see climate science made relevant and actionable for decision-makers.

"The insights and experiences shared by the water managers were instrumental in shaping our study, right from generating the research question,” Jagannathan said. “The iterative process helped to ensure that these findings resonate with real-world water management challenges."

Lynnette Harris Marketing and Communications College of Agriculture and Applied Sciences 435-764-6936 [email protected]

Binod Pokharel Post Doc Research Associate Plants, Soils & Climate Department 307-223-6633 [email protected]

Matthew LaPlante Faculty Journalism and Communications Department 435-797-1353 [email protected]

Comments and questions regarding this article may be directed to the contact person listed on this page.

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NASA Data Shows How Drought Changes Wildfire Recovery in the West

A new study using NASA satellite data reveals how drought affects the recovery of western ecosystems from fire, a result that could provide meaningful information for conservation efforts.

The West has been witnessing a trend of increasing number and intensity of wildland fires. Historically a natural part of the region's ecology, fires have been exacerbated by climate change—including more frequent and intense droughts—and past efforts to suppress fires, which can lead to the accumulation of combustible material like fallen branches and leaves. But quantifying how fire and drought jointly affect ecosystems has proven difficult.

In the new study, researchers analyzed over 1,500 fires from 2014 to 2020 across the West, and also gathered data on drought conditions dating back to 1984. They found that droughts make it harder for grasslands and shrublands, such as those in Nevada and Utah, to recover after fires—even the less severe blazes. Forests, if not burned too badly, rebound better than grasslands and shrublands because some forest roots can tap into water deeper in the ground. The team reported its findings in the February 2024 issue of Nature Ecology & Environment .

“Many of the West’s grasslands experience low-severity fires,” said Shahryar Ahmad, lead author of the study and a research scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “This study shows that even those blazes can trigger a slow recovery in these ecosystems if accompanied by a preceding drought.”

If ecosystems don’t have enough time to bounce back before another drought or fire, that could lead to permanent changes in the types of plants growing there. That, in turn, can increase the risk of soil erosion and landslides, and alter the usual patterns of water running off into streams and lakes.

“Once a fire is contained, that's when the remediation efforts happen,” said Everett Hinkley, the national remote sensing program manager for the U.S. Forest Service, who wasn’t involved in the new research. “Understanding how a particular ecosystem and land cover type is going to respond after the fire informs what actions you need to take to restore the landscape.”

Without such restoration, changes in land cover can cascade to potentially affect agriculture, tourism, and other community livelihoods. To track the recovery of the different ecosystems, the researchers examined changes in evapotranspiration (ET)—the transfer of water to the atmosphere through evaporation from soil and open water and transpiration from plants—before and after the fires. Monitoring evapotranspiration helped the team identify whether different ecosystems, such as forests and grasslands, completely recovered after a fire, or if the recovery was delayed or disrupted.

That evapotranspiration data came from OpenET , a tool that calculates evapotranspiration at the scale of a quarter-acre across the western United States. It does so using models that harness publicly available data from the Landsat program, a partnership between NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey, along with other NASA and NOAA satellites.

“This study highlights the dominant control of drought on altering resilience of vegetation to fires in the West,” said Erin Urquhart, the water resources program manager at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “With ongoing climate change, it is imperative that land managers, policymakers, and communities work together, informed by such research, to adapt to these changes, mitigating risks and ensuring the sustainable use of water and other natural resources.”

The research also showed that forests, grasslands, and shrublands all struggle to recover from droughts that occur close in time with high-severity fires, which are becoming more common in the West. That can lead to potentially lasting changes not only in the plant communities but also in local and regional water dynamics.

Severe fires damage plants to such an extent that evapotranspiration is greatly reduced in the following years, the researchers found. So instead of evaporating into the atmosphere, more water sinks into the ground as recharge or becomes runoff.

Using a subset of nearly 800 fires from 2016 to 2018, the researchers calculated that across all the ecoregions in the study, an average of about 528 billion gallons (two cubic kilometers) of water was diverted as runoff or recharge during the first year after a fire. That’s equivalent to North Dakota’s annual water demand, or one quarter of Shasta Lake, California’s largest humanmade lake.

When more water becomes runoff, it means less could be available for ecosystem recovery or agriculture. As Earth's climate continues to warm, understanding these shifts is crucial for developing strategies to manage water resources more effectively and ensure water security for future generations.

By: Emily DeMarco, NASA Earth Science Division

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• Warning : Undefined array key "height" in template_preprocess_responsive_image() (line 210 of core/modules/responsive_image/responsive_image.module ). template_preprocess_responsive_image(Array) (Line: 101) Drupal\responsive_bg_image_formatter\Plugin\Field\FieldFormatter\ResponsiveBgImageFormatter->viewElements(Object, 'en') (Line: 91) Drupal\Core\Field\FormatterBase->view(Object, 'en') (Line: 76) Drupal\Core\Field\Plugin\Field\FieldFormatter\EntityReferenceFormatterBase->view(Object, NULL) (Line: 268) Drupal\Core\Entity\Entity\EntityViewDisplay->buildMultiple(Array) (Line: 339) Drupal\Core\Entity\EntityViewBuilder->buildComponents(Array, Array, Array, 'full') (Line: 24) Drupal\node\NodeViewBuilder->buildComponents(Array, Array, Array, 'full') (Line: 281) Drupal\Core\Entity\EntityViewBuilder->buildMultiple(Array) (Line: 238) Drupal\Core\Entity\EntityViewBuilder->build(Array) call_user_func_array(Array, Array) (Line: 111) Drupal\Core\Render\Renderer->doTrustedCallback(Array, Array, 'Render #pre_render callbacks must be methods of a class that implements \Drupal\Core\Security\TrustedCallbackInterface or be an anonymous function. The callback was %s. See https://www.drupal.org/node/2966725', 'exception', 'Drupal\Core\Render\Element\RenderCallbackInterface') (Line: 859) Drupal\Core\Render\Renderer->doCallback('#pre_render', Array, Array) (Line: 421) Drupal\Core\Render\Renderer->doRender(Array, ) (Line: 240) Drupal\Core\Render\Renderer->render(Array, ) (Line: 238) Drupal\Core\Render\MainContent\HtmlRenderer->Drupal\Core\Render\MainContent\{closure}() (Line: 627) Drupal\Core\Render\Renderer->executeInRenderContext(Object, Object) (Line: 239) Drupal\Core\Render\MainContent\HtmlRenderer->prepare(Array, Object, Object) (Line: 128) Drupal\Core\Render\MainContent\HtmlRenderer->renderResponse(Array, Object, Object) (Line: 90) Drupal\Core\EventSubscriber\MainContentViewSubscriber->onViewRenderArray(Object, 'kernel.view', Object) call_user_func(Array, Object, 'kernel.view', Object) (Line: 111) Drupal\Component\EventDispatcher\ContainerAwareEventDispatcher->dispatch(Object, 'kernel.view') (Line: 186) Symfony\Component\HttpKernel\HttpKernel->handleRaw(Object, 1) (Line: 76) Symfony\Component\HttpKernel\HttpKernel->handle(Object, 1, 1) (Line: 58) Drupal\Core\StackMiddleware\Session->handle(Object, 1, 1) (Line: 48) Drupal\Core\StackMiddleware\KernelPreHandle->handle(Object, 1, 1) (Line: 28) Drupal\Core\StackMiddleware\ContentLength->handle(Object, 1, 1) (Line: 32) Drupal\big_pipe\StackMiddleware\ContentLength->handle(Object, 1, 1) (Line: 191) Drupal\page_cache\StackMiddleware\PageCache->fetch(Object, 1, 1) (Line: 128) Drupal\page_cache\StackMiddleware\PageCache->lookup(Object, 1, 1) (Line: 82) Drupal\page_cache\StackMiddleware\PageCache->handle(Object, 1, 1) (Line: 48) Drupal\Core\StackMiddleware\ReverseProxyMiddleware->handle(Object, 1, 1) (Line: 51) Drupal\Core\StackMiddleware\NegotiationMiddleware->handle(Object, 1, 1) (Line: 36) Drupal\Core\StackMiddleware\AjaxPageState->handle(Object, 1, 1) (Line: 51) Drupal\Core\StackMiddleware\StackedHttpKernel->handle(Object, 1, 1) (Line: 704) Drupal\Core\DrupalKernel->handle(Object) (Line: 19)
• Warning : Undefined array key "media" in Drupal\responsive_bg_image_formatter\Plugin\Field\FieldFormatter\ResponsiveBgImageFormatter->viewElements() (line 112 of modules/custom/responsive_bg_image_formatter/src/Plugin/Field/FieldFormatter/ResponsiveBgImageFormatter.php ). Drupal\responsive_bg_image_formatter\Plugin\Field\FieldFormatter\ResponsiveBgImageFormatter->viewElements(Object, 'en') (Line: 91) Drupal\Core\Field\FormatterBase->view(Object, 'en') (Line: 76) Drupal\Core\Field\Plugin\Field\FieldFormatter\EntityReferenceFormatterBase->view(Object, NULL) (Line: 268) Drupal\Core\Entity\Entity\EntityViewDisplay->buildMultiple(Array) (Line: 339) Drupal\Core\Entity\EntityViewBuilder->buildComponents(Array, Array, Array, 'full') (Line: 24) Drupal\node\NodeViewBuilder->buildComponents(Array, Array, Array, 'full') (Line: 281) Drupal\Core\Entity\EntityViewBuilder->buildMultiple(Array) (Line: 238) Drupal\Core\Entity\EntityViewBuilder->build(Array) call_user_func_array(Array, Array) (Line: 111) Drupal\Core\Render\Renderer->doTrustedCallback(Array, Array, 'Render #pre_render callbacks must be methods of a class that implements \Drupal\Core\Security\TrustedCallbackInterface or be an anonymous function. The callback was %s. See https://www.drupal.org/node/2966725', 'exception', 'Drupal\Core\Render\Element\RenderCallbackInterface') (Line: 859) Drupal\Core\Render\Renderer->doCallback('#pre_render', Array, Array) (Line: 421) Drupal\Core\Render\Renderer->doRender(Array, ) (Line: 240) Drupal\Core\Render\Renderer->render(Array, ) (Line: 238) Drupal\Core\Render\MainContent\HtmlRenderer->Drupal\Core\Render\MainContent\{closure}() (Line: 627) Drupal\Core\Render\Renderer->executeInRenderContext(Object, Object) (Line: 239) Drupal\Core\Render\MainContent\HtmlRenderer->prepare(Array, Object, Object) (Line: 128) Drupal\Core\Render\MainContent\HtmlRenderer->renderResponse(Array, Object, Object) (Line: 90) Drupal\Core\EventSubscriber\MainContentViewSubscriber->onViewRenderArray(Object, 'kernel.view', Object) call_user_func(Array, Object, 'kernel.view', Object) (Line: 111) Drupal\Component\EventDispatcher\ContainerAwareEventDispatcher->dispatch(Object, 'kernel.view') (Line: 186) Symfony\Component\HttpKernel\HttpKernel->handleRaw(Object, 1) (Line: 76) Symfony\Component\HttpKernel\HttpKernel->handle(Object, 1, 1) (Line: 58) Drupal\Core\StackMiddleware\Session->handle(Object, 1, 1) (Line: 48) Drupal\Core\StackMiddleware\KernelPreHandle->handle(Object, 1, 1) (Line: 28) Drupal\Core\StackMiddleware\ContentLength->handle(Object, 1, 1) (Line: 32) Drupal\big_pipe\StackMiddleware\ContentLength->handle(Object, 1, 1) (Line: 191) Drupal\page_cache\StackMiddleware\PageCache->fetch(Object, 1, 1) (Line: 128) Drupal\page_cache\StackMiddleware\PageCache->lookup(Object, 1, 1) (Line: 82) Drupal\page_cache\StackMiddleware\PageCache->handle(Object, 1, 1) (Line: 48) Drupal\Core\StackMiddleware\ReverseProxyMiddleware->handle(Object, 1, 1) (Line: 51) Drupal\Core\StackMiddleware\NegotiationMiddleware->handle(Object, 1, 1) (Line: 36) Drupal\Core\StackMiddleware\AjaxPageState->handle(Object, 1, 1) (Line: 51) Drupal\Core\StackMiddleware\StackedHttpKernel->handle(Object, 1, 1) (Line: 704) Drupal\Core\DrupalKernel->handle(Object) (Line: 19)
• Deprecated function : str_replace(): Passing null to parameter #3 ($subject) of type array|string is deprecated in Drupal\responsive_bg_image_formatter\Plugin\Field\FieldFormatter\ResponsiveBgImageFormatter->viewElements() (line 126 of modules/custom/responsive_bg_image_formatter/src/Plugin/Field/FieldFormatter/ResponsiveBgImageFormatter.php ). Drupal\responsive_bg_image_formatter\Plugin\Field\FieldFormatter\ResponsiveBgImageFormatter->viewElements(Object, 'en') (Line: 91) Drupal\Core\Field\FormatterBase->view(Object, 'en') (Line: 76) Drupal\Core\Field\Plugin\Field\FieldFormatter\EntityReferenceFormatterBase->view(Object, NULL) (Line: 268) Drupal\Core\Entity\Entity\EntityViewDisplay->buildMultiple(Array) (Line: 339) Drupal\Core\Entity\EntityViewBuilder->buildComponents(Array, Array, Array, 'full') (Line: 24) Drupal\node\NodeViewBuilder->buildComponents(Array, Array, Array, 'full') (Line: 281) Drupal\Core\Entity\EntityViewBuilder->buildMultiple(Array) (Line: 238) Drupal\Core\Entity\EntityViewBuilder->build(Array) call_user_func_array(Array, Array) (Line: 111) Drupal\Core\Render\Renderer->doTrustedCallback(Array, Array, 'Render #pre_render callbacks must be methods of a class that implements \Drupal\Core\Security\TrustedCallbackInterface or be an anonymous function. The callback was %s. See https://www.drupal.org/node/2966725', 'exception', 'Drupal\Core\Render\Element\RenderCallbackInterface') (Line: 859) Drupal\Core\Render\Renderer->doCallback('#pre_render', Array, Array) (Line: 421) Drupal\Core\Render\Renderer->doRender(Array, ) (Line: 240) Drupal\Core\Render\Renderer->render(Array, ) (Line: 238) Drupal\Core\Render\MainContent\HtmlRenderer->Drupal\Core\Render\MainContent\{closure}() (Line: 627) Drupal\Core\Render\Renderer->executeInRenderContext(Object, Object) (Line: 239) Drupal\Core\Render\MainContent\HtmlRenderer->prepare(Array, Object, Object) (Line: 128) Drupal\Core\Render\MainContent\HtmlRenderer->renderResponse(Array, Object, Object) (Line: 90) Drupal\Core\EventSubscriber\MainContentViewSubscriber->onViewRenderArray(Object, 'kernel.view', Object) call_user_func(Array, Object, 'kernel.view', Object) (Line: 111) Drupal\Component\EventDispatcher\ContainerAwareEventDispatcher->dispatch(Object, 'kernel.view') (Line: 186) Symfony\Component\HttpKernel\HttpKernel->handleRaw(Object, 1) (Line: 76) Symfony\Component\HttpKernel\HttpKernel->handle(Object, 1, 1) (Line: 58) Drupal\Core\StackMiddleware\Session->handle(Object, 1, 1) (Line: 48) Drupal\Core\StackMiddleware\KernelPreHandle->handle(Object, 1, 1) (Line: 28) Drupal\Core\StackMiddleware\ContentLength->handle(Object, 1, 1) (Line: 32) Drupal\big_pipe\StackMiddleware\ContentLength->handle(Object, 1, 1) (Line: 191) Drupal\page_cache\StackMiddleware\PageCache->fetch(Object, 1, 1) (Line: 128) Drupal\page_cache\StackMiddleware\PageCache->lookup(Object, 1, 1) (Line: 82) Drupal\page_cache\StackMiddleware\PageCache->handle(Object, 1, 1) (Line: 48) Drupal\Core\StackMiddleware\ReverseProxyMiddleware->handle(Object, 1, 1) (Line: 51) Drupal\Core\StackMiddleware\NegotiationMiddleware->handle(Object, 1, 1) (Line: 36) Drupal\Core\StackMiddleware\AjaxPageState->handle(Object, 1, 1) (Line: 51) Drupal\Core\StackMiddleware\StackedHttpKernel->handle(Object, 1, 1) (Line: 704) Drupal\Core\DrupalKernel->handle(Object) (Line: 19)
• Warning : Undefined variable $index in Drupal\responsive_bg_image_formatter\Plugin\Field\FieldFormatter\ResponsiveBgImageFormatter->viewElements() (line 153 of modules/custom/responsive_bg_image_formatter/src/Plugin/Field/FieldFormatter/ResponsiveBgImageFormatter.php ). Drupal\responsive_bg_image_formatter\Plugin\Field\FieldFormatter\ResponsiveBgImageFormatter->viewElements(Object, 'en') (Line: 91) Drupal\Core\Field\FormatterBase->view(Object, 'en') (Line: 76) Drupal\Core\Field\Plugin\Field\FieldFormatter\EntityReferenceFormatterBase->view(Object, NULL) (Line: 268) Drupal\Core\Entity\Entity\EntityViewDisplay->buildMultiple(Array) (Line: 339) Drupal\Core\Entity\EntityViewBuilder->buildComponents(Array, Array, Array, 'full') (Line: 24) Drupal\node\NodeViewBuilder->buildComponents(Array, Array, Array, 'full') (Line: 281) Drupal\Core\Entity\EntityViewBuilder->buildMultiple(Array) (Line: 238) Drupal\Core\Entity\EntityViewBuilder->build(Array) call_user_func_array(Array, Array) (Line: 111) Drupal\Core\Render\Renderer->doTrustedCallback(Array, Array, 'Render #pre_render callbacks must be methods of a class that implements \Drupal\Core\Security\TrustedCallbackInterface or be an anonymous function. The callback was %s. See https://www.drupal.org/node/2966725', 'exception', 'Drupal\Core\Render\Element\RenderCallbackInterface') (Line: 859) Drupal\Core\Render\Renderer->doCallback('#pre_render', Array, Array) (Line: 421) Drupal\Core\Render\Renderer->doRender(Array, ) (Line: 240) Drupal\Core\Render\Renderer->render(Array, ) (Line: 238) Drupal\Core\Render\MainContent\HtmlRenderer->Drupal\Core\Render\MainContent\{closure}() (Line: 627) Drupal\Core\Render\Renderer->executeInRenderContext(Object, Object) (Line: 239) Drupal\Core\Render\MainContent\HtmlRenderer->prepare(Array, Object, Object) (Line: 128) Drupal\Core\Render\MainContent\HtmlRenderer->renderResponse(Array, Object, Object) (Line: 90) Drupal\Core\EventSubscriber\MainContentViewSubscriber->onViewRenderArray(Object, 'kernel.view', Object) call_user_func(Array, Object, 'kernel.view', Object) (Line: 111) Drupal\Component\EventDispatcher\ContainerAwareEventDispatcher->dispatch(Object, 'kernel.view') (Line: 186) Symfony\Component\HttpKernel\HttpKernel->handleRaw(Object, 1) (Line: 76) Symfony\Component\HttpKernel\HttpKernel->handle(Object, 1, 1) (Line: 58) Drupal\Core\StackMiddleware\Session->handle(Object, 1, 1) (Line: 48) Drupal\Core\StackMiddleware\KernelPreHandle->handle(Object, 1, 1) (Line: 28) Drupal\Core\StackMiddleware\ContentLength->handle(Object, 1, 1) (Line: 32) Drupal\big_pipe\StackMiddleware\ContentLength->handle(Object, 1, 1) (Line: 191) Drupal\page_cache\StackMiddleware\PageCache->fetch(Object, 1, 1) (Line: 128) Drupal\page_cache\StackMiddleware\PageCache->lookup(Object, 1, 1) (Line: 82) Drupal\page_cache\StackMiddleware\PageCache->handle(Object, 1, 1) (Line: 48) Drupal\Core\StackMiddleware\ReverseProxyMiddleware->handle(Object, 1, 1) (Line: 51) Drupal\Core\StackMiddleware\NegotiationMiddleware->handle(Object, 1, 1) (Line: 36) Drupal\Core\StackMiddleware\AjaxPageState->handle(Object, 1, 1) (Line: 51) Drupal\Core\StackMiddleware\StackedHttpKernel->handle(Object, 1, 1) (Line: 704) Drupal\Core\DrupalKernel->handle(Object) (Line: 19)

NIDIS Announces Five New Research Projects

NOAA’s National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS) Program is announcing five new 2-year projects in Fiscal Year 2020 (FY20), through a multi-program collaboration, that aim to improve our understanding and use of drought indicators, thresholds and triggers, and drought impact reporting to inform decision-making to prepare for and respond to drought. The competitively selected projects total $2,776,805, including $2,541,397 in grants and $200,000 in other awards. 

Through NOAA’s Climate Program Office FY20 Coping with Drought competition, NIDIS encouraged applicants to focus on industry and economic sectors beyond agriculture (e.g. tourism and recreation, navigation, water utilities, manufacturing, ecosystem services, and public health). In particular, NIDIS was interested in in several areas of study: applied research that explored innovation in the arena of impact reporting and purposeful analysis that moves beyond cataloging impacts to inform decision-making; comparing historical physical indicators to impact data to determine if they were  adequate to set thresholds and triggers in response and mitigation plans; examining whether impact data be used to measure increases in resilience over time based on actions taken to decrease vulnerability and mitigate drought impacts; determining if current impact data collected is adequate or robust enough to be used as an input into drought vulnerability assessments; and understanding how biophysical indicators could be better integrated into drought planning and mitigation.

The portfolio of projects selected includes lead institutions in Colorado, Washington, Idaho, California, and Nebraska. These are led by non-federal universities, nonprofits, non-governmental institutions, and small businesses. Projects include federal partners, too. Applied research will focus on emerging issues such as ecological drought, drought impacts to tourism and recreation, public health, water storage and conveyance systems, and the complex connections between drought indicators and impacts. 

The 5 new projects funded by NIDIS in FY20 are:

• Total funding: $649,840
• Brief description: Droughts of the 21st century are characterized by hotter temperatures, greater spatial extent, and longer duration. Reductions in water available to natural systems are increasingly exacerbated by human water use. This situation leads to ecological impacts from drought that ripple through human communities which depend on those ecosystems for critical goods and services. Despite the high costs to both nature and people, current drought research, management, and policy perspectives often fail to evaluate how drought affects ecosystems and the “natural capital” they provide to human communities. Integrating ecological drought into decision-making is an essential step toward addressing the rising risk of drought in the 21st century. However, ecological drought is a relatively new concept, and it requires development before it can be truly integrated into decision-making efforts to prepare for and respond to drought. This project will provide a foundation of understanding ecological drought vulnerability to support participatory planning processes that integrate ecological drought. The team will produce integrated science products to improve our understanding of how drought indices, landscape context, ecological condition, and human water use relate to ecological thresholds. This will allow natural resource managers and drought planners to better anticipate ecological impacts and downstream effects on human communities. 
• PI: Shelley Crausbay, Conservation Science Partners, Inc. 
• Co-PIs: Kimberly Hall, The Nature Conservancy; Molly Cross, Wildlife Conservation Society; Jason Dunham, USGS Forest and Rangeland Ecosystem Science Center; Colin Penn, USGS Colorado Water Science Center 
• Total funding: $400,755
• Brief description: Effective natural resource and land management requires the ability to mitigate the impacts of drought. However, we lack a clear understanding of the drought indicators and associated thresholds that are most informative to undertake specific actions (drought triggers) and to assess drought impacts in the Pacific Northwest region. This project will investigate the relationships between indicators, thresholds, triggers, and impacts within economic sectors that fall under the purview of natural resource management, including recreation. It will combine stakeholder-sourced impacts data with existing hydro-meteorological information and communicate the relationships that have the most explanatory value. The ultimate goal is to improve the ability of drought managers in these sectors to mitigate economic drought impacts through timely action based on relevant information. To this end, the project will: (1) collaborate with stakeholders to develop a database of drought impacts specific to natural resource management and recreation; (2) collaborate with stakeholders to identify the drought information (timescales, decision calendars, indicators, and thresholds) they would need to trigger drought impact mitigation efforts; (3) apply analytical approaches using a suite of existing hydro-meteorological and other datasets to objectively identify historical relationships between sector-specific drought indicators, thresholds, triggers, and impacts; and (4) communicate project findings to the stakeholder community through information sheets, a workshop, and an online decision support tool in the NIDIS-sponsored Climate Toolbox. The decision support tool will link drought indicators and thresholds with historic impacts and triggers for the natural resources and recreation sectors.
• PIs: Bart Nijssen, University of Washington and John Abatzoglou, University of California-Merced
• Total cost: $650,000
• Brief description: One of the challenges facing drought preparedness is how to refine linkages between drought indicators and drought impacts across multiple sectors and  identify triggers and thresholds for drought response. This is particularly challenging in the western United States, where extensive water storage and conveyance systems help mitigate local drought conditions. In these settings, current indicators of drought hazard—which focus on local supply conditions—may have limited connection with actual water scarcity. This project seeks to develop a methodology for evaluating impacts in water and land use sectors in regions that have extensive water storage and conveyance systems. There are four linked scientific objectives: 1) incorporate the capability and condition of water storage and conveyance systems into drought hazard indicators; 2) develop sector-specific drought hazard indicators for urban, agricultural, and rural communities, along with indicators for freshwater ecosystems; 3) link drought hazard indicators with exposure and vulnerability metrics to profile drought impact risk in each sector in each region; and 4) use a collaborative process to develop readily updatable map-based decision support tools building on current NIDIS platforms.
• PIs: Alvar Escriva-Bou, Ellen Hanak, and Jeffrey Mount, Public Policy Institute of California
• Total cost: $582,568
• Brief description: This project will take an interdisciplinary approach to improving public health understanding of drought early warning and planning to reduce negative health impacts on at-risk populations in the United States. Health departments and healthcare professionals need reliable information to effectively prepare and warn constituents of pending natural and biological threats. This information is critical to develop hazard messaging or other response actions in a timely fashion. Warning systems for drought are a high priority of federal and local agencies, but drought presents a complex issue, as public health officials are just starting to investigate the connections to human health. Public health guidance documents and other tools are available for officials to help address drought, but these materials lack effectiveness if the linkages between drought and health are not fully understood. To overcome this issue, a thorough assessment of the relationship between drought indicators and health outcomes is needed. The project team believes that health outcomes based on drought will vary for different regions of the United States because of changes in populations demographics, local environment, and overall drought exposure. Certain underlying health disparities (e.g. race/ethnicity, age groups, occupation, rural or urban status, and access to existing health care) will result in some areas of the United States being more vulnerable to drought. As the team evaluates various drought indices with health outcomes, they will also identify discrepancies in population outcomes. The project will analyze multiple drought indices to identify potential regional health outcomes. The findings will benefit public health professionals or emergency planners by showing utility for certain drought indicators in predicting health outcomes and enable the production of specialized messaging for at-risk populations.
• PI: Jesse Bell, University of Nebraska Medical Center
• Co-PIs: Jesse Berman, University of Minnesota; Shubhayu Saha, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Azar Abadi, Rachel Lookado, and Yeongjin Gwon, University of Nebraska Medical Center; Ronnie Leeper and Jared Rennie, North Carolina State University
• Total funding: $458,234
• Brief description: Drought Early Warning Systems (DEWS) are well-equipped with indicator data, which describe the physical severity and extent of drought conditions. However, few models exist to translate indicators into socioeconomic impacts, so DEWS have limited capacity to identify thresholds that trigger drought management responses. Improving our understanding of the relationship between indicators and impacts is critical to helping decision-makers reduce the adverse consequences of drought. This project will develop empirical quantitative models that can better capture the relationships between drought indicators and impacts, predict drought impacts, and identify indicator thresholds. These models will help support policy and planning by identifying triggers for management action and improving drought management frameworks using machine learning techniques to map and quantify the complex connections between drought indicators and impacts.
• PI: Adam Wlostowski, Lynker Technologies, LLC
• Co-PIs: Megan O’Grady, Keith Jennings, and Graeme Aggett, Lynker Technologies, LLC; Jesse Burkhardt, Colorado State University

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)

Ecological Drought Enters Unfamiliar Territory

Drought Prediction Sensitivity to Land Surface Conditions

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New Texas report predicts extreme weather, drought conditions to worsen

AUSTIN (KXAN) — A new study released Monday by the Office of the Texas State Climatologist and public policy think tank Texas 2036 pointed to an anticipated bump in 100-degree days in Texas and worsening drought conditions in the future.

The study marked the latest edition of “Future Trends of Extreme Weather in Texas,” an ongoing analysis of the changing environmental landscape in the Lone Star State. The newest findings also follow a record-breaking volume of wildfires statewide last year and the Smokehouse Creek Fire in late February, the largest wildfire in Texas history.

Some of the significant takeaways of the report’s update centered around the rise in extreme heat patterns and strains those present for the state’s electricity supply, as well as the possibility of more urban flooding.

The report anticipates 100-degree days will be four times as common in 2036 compared to the 1970s and 1980s; an increase in extreme temperatures will lead to further dependency on lower thermostat temperatures, increasing electricity demand

Parts of Texas, particularly the western and southern portions of the state, will likely see heightened wildfire risks and changes to property insurance rates

Anticipated 7% increase in “summertime evaporative losses” by 2036 will result in worsening drought conditions and accelerated drying up of existing surface water

Projected 15% increase in “extreme one-day precipitation events” since the late 1900s could contribute to a more pronounced rainfall pattern that leads to more urban flooding by 2036

Texas’ agricultural growing season has lengthened over past 50 years, starting approximately a half-month earlier and wrapping a half-month later

“Our summers have been growing significantly hotter and rainfall has become more sporadic, reshaping Texas’ weather patterns,” said Dr. John Nielsen-Gammon — the Texas State climatologist at Texas A&M University — in the release. “If current trends continue, Texans will face more intense and frequent heat waves, more erratic rainfall and an increasing fire risk in certain areas of the state.”

From a regional standpoint, the report found West Texas has seen a surge in the number of high-risk days for wildfires breaking out. Over in East Texas, it’s projected that rainfall intensity will jump roughly 10% compared to the 2001-2020 timeframe, and 20% higher than the 1950-1999 time period.

Infrastructure improvements in urban areas are recommended due to projected heightened flood risks and the possibility of extreme rainfall events growing. Relative sea level rises in the coastal bend portion of Texas could also yield heightened storm risks down the road.

Statewide, the report anticipates increased temperatures paired with more varied rainfall could elevate future severe drought risks, in turn presenting further strain on Texas rivers, lakes and reservoirs.

A closer look at the report is available online.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KXAN Austin.

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Drought Pushes Millions Into ‘Acute Hunger’ in Southern Africa

The disaster, intensified by El Niño, is devastating communities across several countries, killing crops and livestock and sending food prices soaring.

By Somini Sengupta and Manuela Andreoni

An estimated 20 million people in southern Africa are facing what the United Nations calls “acute hunger” as one of the worst droughts in more than four decades shrivels crops, decimates livestock and, after years of rising food prices brought on by pandemic and war, spikes the price of corn, the region’s staple crop.

Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe have all declared national emergencies.

It is a bitter foretaste of what a warming climate is projected to bring to a region that’s likely to be acutely affected by climate change, though scientists said on Thursday that the current drought is more driven by the natural weather cycle known as El Niño than by global warming.

Its effects are all the more punishing because in the past few years the region had been hit by cyclones, unusually heavy rains and a widening outbreak of cholera.

‘Urgent help’ is needed

The rains this year began late and were lower than average. In February, when crops need it most, parts of Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, Angola, Mozambique and Botswana received a fifth of the typical rainfall.

That’s devastating for these largely agrarian countries, where farmers rely entirely on the rains.

In southern Malawi, in a district called Chikwawa, some residents were wading into a river rife with crocodiles to collect a wild tuber known as nyika to curb their hunger. “My area needs urgent help,” the local leader, who identified himself as Chief Chimombo, said.

Elsewhere, cattle in search of water walked into fields still muddy from last year’s heavy rains, only to get stuck, said Chikondi Chabvuta, a Malawi-based aid worker with CARE, the international relief organization. Thousands of cattle deaths have been reported in the region, according to the group.

The first few months of every year, just before the harvest begins in late April and May, are usually a lean season. This year, because harvests are projected to be significantly lower , the lean season is likely to last longer. “The food security situation is very bad and is expected to get worse,” Ms. Chabvuta said.

Local corn prices have risen sharply. In Zambia, the price more than doubled between January 2022 and January of this year, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization . In Malawi, it rose fourfold.

The F.A.O. pointed out that, in addition to low yields, grain prices have been abnormally high because of the war in Ukraine, one of the world’s biggest grain exporters, as well as weak currencies in several southern African countries, making it expensive to buy imported food, fuel and fertilizers.

Why it’s happening

According to an analysis published Thursday by World Weather Attribution, an international coalition of scientists that focuses on rapid assessment of extreme weather events, the driving force behind the current drought is El Niño, a natural weather phenomenon that heats parts of the Pacific Ocean every few years and tweaks the weather in different ways in different parts of the world. In Southern Africa, El Niños tend to bring below-average rainfall.

El Niño made this drought twice as likely, the study concluded. That weather pattern is now weakening, but a repeat is expected soon.

The drought may also have been worsened by deforestation, which throws off local rainfall patterns and degrades soils, the study concluded.

Droughts are notoriously hard to attribute to global warming. That is particularly true in regions like Southern Africa, in part because it doesn’t have a dense network of weather stations offering detailed historical data.

Scientists are uncertain as to whether climate change played a role in this particular drought. However, there is little uncertainty about the long-term effects of climate change in this part of the world.

The average temperature in Southern Africa has risen by 1.04 to 1.8 degrees Celsius in the past 50 years , according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and the number of hot days has increased. That makes a dry year worse. Plants and animals are thirstier. Moisture evaporates. Soils dry out. Scientific models indicate that Southern Africa is becoming drier overall .

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change calls Southern Africa a climate change “hot spot in terms of both hot extremes and drying.”

The costs of adaptation

To the millions of people trying to cope with this drought, it hardly matters whether climate change or something else is responsible for why the skies have gone dry.

What matters is whether these communities can adapt fast enough to weather shocks.

“It’s really important that resilience to droughts, especially in these parts of the continent, should really be improved,” said Joyce Kimutai, one of the authors of the study and a researcher at the Grantham Institute, a climate and environment center at Imperial College London.

There are existing solutions that need money to put into effect: early warning systems that inform people about what to expect, insurance and other social safety programs to help them prepare, as well as diversifying what farmers plant. Corn is extremely vulnerable to heat and erratic rains.

Golden Matonga contributed reporting.

Somini Sengupta is the international climate reporter on the Times climate team. More about Somini Sengupta

Manuela Andreoni is a Times climate and environmental reporter and a writer for the Climate Forward newsletter. More about Manuela Andreoni

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Research suggests that part of India will become a climate hotspot

by Michael Hallermayer, University of Augsburg

The Indian subcontinent is likely to experience an increasing number of extreme weather events in future. The fertile and densely populated plain around the Indus and Ganges rivers is therefore likely to become a climate change hotspot, which could have severe consequences for several hundred million people.

This is the conclusion of a study conducted by researchers from the Indian Institute of Technology and the University of Augsburg, which has been published in the Journal of Hydrometeorology .

The study investigated what are referred to as compound extreme events, which experts define as various extreme weather conditions that occur simultaneously or in direct succession. An example is a drought that is accompanied by a heat wave. Conversely, extremely high temperatures may be followed by day or weeklong heavy rainfall.

"The damage caused by the combination of such weather phenomena are usually especially severe," explains Prof. Dr. Harald Kunstmann from the Center of Climate Resilience at the University of Augsburg. "We have therefore analyzed how frequently compound weather events could take place in India in future and which regions are likely to be especially affected."

The researchers used a sophisticated statistical method originally developed by financial mathematicians that calculates the probability of certain developments occurring together. The so-called copula method is used on the stock exchange to better predict coupled prices for oil and gas.

"We have used this method in climate research. What interests us is the simultaneous occurrence of extremely high temperatures together with drought and heavy rainfall," says Kunstmann. "With the copula method we can estimate how much more likely such compound events will be in the coming decades."

Four possible development scenarios analyzed

The researchers analyzed four possible development scenarios. The most favorable was based on the assumption that greenhouse gas emissions will be significantly reduced in future. In the least favorable scenario, on the other hand, it was assumed that there will be increased exploitation of fossil fuels.

Each scenario was therefore based on assumptions about future carbon dioxide emissions. But the scenarios don't just stop there: they also describe how population numbers, the distribution of resources, technological trends and lifestyles will develop in future. The scenarios are therefore potential, internally consistent blueprints for the world of tomorrow.

"The scenarios also contain assumptions about how many people will live in future," emphasizes Kunstmann. "We utilize this in our study. On the one hand, we can say how much more frequent combined weather phenomena will be in each scenario. On the other hand, we can calculate how many people will be affected."

The results of this analysis are geographical maps that show climate change "hotspots": namely, regions in which many people are likely to be particularly affected by future developments. In each of the scenarios, the study showed that the Indian subcontinent, and in particular the lowlands around the Indus and Ganges rivers, are likely to be severely affected.

India's densely populated breadbasket

"The Indo-Gangetic Plain is one and a half times the size of Spain and is already one of the most densely populated areas in the world," says Kunstmann. "In the future, the population is expected to continue to climb."

At the same time, the lowlands are very fertile, with rice and wheat the main crops grown. As a result of global warming , there is an increased risk that parts of these crops will be destroyed due to heat, drought, and heavy rainfall.

"Our findings can help in political decision -making and planning," explains Kunstmann. "Even in the most favorable scenario, people in the Indo-Gangetic Plain will be severely affected by climate change. It is therefore important to prepare in advance through such measures as investing in seeds that are better adapted to heat and drought, building dams that minimize the risk of flooding, as well as storing rainfall in times when it is plentiful in order to use it later for irrigation in times of drought."

Through a range a such measures, India can better prepare itself to withstand impending changes.

"We need to slow global warming, which is the cause of the increased risk of heat waves, droughts, and floods," adds Kunstmann.

"But we cannot mitigate it completely, which means we have to adapt. At the Center for Climate Resilience, we are working on methods and analyses that show where preparation and adaptation measures are particularly necessary and how they can be implemented."

The researchers are planning to expand their study, which up until now has been limited to India. They will now model the entire globe to see where especially many people are likely to be affected by global warming and compound extreme events in the future .

Provided by University of Augsburg

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Ethiopia + 5 more

Research Associate - Agriculture sector

We are looking for a new Associate to join our team and focus on our portfolio of projects in the Agriculture sector. The role is based in Amsterdam or in any of our offices in East Africa (Kigali, Nairobi, Kampala, Addis Ababa, and Dar es Salaam).

In the Netherlands, candidates must have EU-EAA nationality or have an existing working permit for the Netherlands. To apply for this vacancy in Kenya or Rwanda, candidates must be Kenyan or Rwandan nationals.

About Laterite

Laterite is a data, research and analytics firm specialized in complex development challenges . We work with universities, global think tanks, international NGOs, multilateral donor organizations, and government ministries and agencies. Our clients include, for example, the World Bank, USAID, TechnoServe, Promundo, the Mastercard Foundation, and several UN agencies.

We currently have offices in the Netherlands, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Sierra Leone, and Peru . The team brings together more than 80 full time local and international staff, as well as 1,000+ enumerators across all countries. We are proud to be a culturally diverse organization, and we welcome applications from groups currently under-represented in our team. Learn more: www.laterite.com

We work in socio-economic development research projects . We believe that impact is a long-term endeavour that requires being embedded in the local context. Delivering high-quality research requires building local teams and data collection systems, knowing the country, and establishing close working relationships.

One of Laterite’s key strategic goals is to create a collaborative and rewarding working environment for our staff , where every team member feels engaged, represented, and heard. Laterite is committed to create opportunities for learning and career development within the team and across our offices.

Laterite is committed to creating a diverse environment and is proud to be an equal opportunities employer . All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, disability, age or veteran status.

What you will do:

As a Research Associate, based in one of our offices, you will:

• Coordinate a portfolio of small research projects with a large client: coordinating the project team; ensuring implementation according to protocols; managing the budget and timeline; and working with client teams.
• Play a hands-on role in all steps of the research process: designing the technical approach; developing protocols, research instruments, and sampling strategies; monitoring data quality; conducting quantitative and qualitative analysis; writing reports; and presenting to clients.
• Contribute to the development of new business: proposing research ideas; writing technical proposals; and pricing.
• Improve the way we work: researching and piloting new methodologies and technologies; standardizing and automating processes for data collection and analysis; and supporting internal operations like recruitment and IT.

You will develop skills and experience in:

• Technical design of research projects
• Data analysis
• Business development
• Managing client relationships
• Managing a portfolio of research projects

What you will bring:

Our ideal candidates are passionate about social and economic research in East Africa. They can quickly grasp research concepts and structure their technical approach to a problem. They have strong analytical and interpersonal skills, self-motivation, and a drive to flourish in a fast-paced environment, where timelines can often be unpredictable. Our candidates have project coordination experience and can manage activities involving varying levels of stakeholders and multiple team members. They are willing to develop their professional skills, contribute to the growth of an organization dedicated to social impact, and thrive in an innovative and collaborative organization.

An ideal candidate will have:

• A master’s degree in Education, Economics, Statistics, Public Health, Public Policy or a related field.
• At least three years of professional experience in research (whether in a project/program or academic setting).
• Strong analytical skills, experience working with quantitative data, and proficiency in Stata.
• Experience communicating with external stakeholders or in a client-facing role.
• Solid project management skills and experience coordinating projects with multiple components or teams.
• Excellent written and oral communication skills in English.

In addition, we value:

• Experience working with primary data (data collection or cleaning and analysis)
• Experience with Open Data Kit (ODK) or an ODK-based platform such as SurveyCTO or CommCare.
• Previous work experience in East Africa
• Research experience in one of Laterite’s core sectors - education, youth and labor, public health, agriculture or urbanization.
• Knowledge of Python and/or R

What’s in it for you?

Laterite offers a competitive remuneration package, including medical insurance and 21 days of annual leave. We are also committed to supporting our staff’s learning, providing an annual learning budget of up to $500 per person and 5 days of time off for professional learning each year. We also provide remote work options in accordance with Laterite's remote work policy.

The starting salary for this role is $2,620 . The exact salary grade will be determined based on the selected candidate’s experience and performance in interviews. Salaries are pegged against the pay matrix. There is ample opportunity for growth both in terms of salary scales and roles. Promotions at Laterite are reviewed during our performance evaluations.

How to apply

1). Verbal Reasoning and Quantitative Assessment

The first step is to complete a 30-minute verbal reasoning and quantitative assessment for which no special preparation is needed.

Link to the assessment: https://form.jotform.com/241093227089559

2). Submit application

Successful candidates will then be invited to upload their CV and cover letter via our online application system.

4). Analytical assessment

Candidates who meet the minimum requirements will be invited to complete an analytical assessment to gauge their capacity to perform statistical analysis on a dataset and present the findings in a short document (using STATA, R, or Python).

5). Interviews

Successful candidates will then be invited to a first interview. The interview stage will consist of three rounds of interviews.

Applications will be considered on a rolling basis. Details on rolling applications can be found on the website: https://www.laterite.com/vacancies/

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