Drought Essay

Drought

Over the past century, the United States has experienced many extreme droughts, all ranging in severity. A drought is defined as the deficiency of precipitation over a period of time which leads to a shortage of water, impacting the community, agriculture, economy, and much more. The intensity of a drought varies depending on the region and its average amount of rainfall. For example, if a region that typically receives rain every day were to go a month without it, they would struggle much more than a region that typically only gets rain four months out of the year. Because of this, there are multiple factors that weigh in on characterizing the drought and its intensity as well as its consequences, both short term and long term, on that specific region. There are several different droughts that have occurred in America that depict the severity of the drought itself and its effects on the region.

Drought is a difficult thing to measure, mainly because of all the different factors that are involved when determining the kind of drought, its intensity, and the length of the drought. Because drought can be defined in many different ways by many people, these are the three most frequently used: Meteorological, Agricultural, and Hydrological drought (What is Drought, n.d.). A Meteorological drought is typically defined by the degree of dryness and the span of the dry period. Agricultural drought focuses on the precipitation shortages, soil water deficits, and reduced ground water or reservoir levels needed for irrigation. The Hydrological drought occurs after periods of continuous lack of precipitation that reduces the water supply, impacting the community (What is Drought, n.d.). When determining whether the drought is short...

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...ecific to our state, California, was the drought from 1987 to 1992. This drought lasted a little over five years and was one of the most severe droughts California had ever experienced, especially the Central Coast. The counties to be mainly affected were Santa Barbara County, San Luis Obispo County, and San Benito County (Teijet, Weitkamp, Jensen, Garcia., 1993). One of the main consequences to hit these counties was environmental. Oak trees, specifically, were not able to recover from this drought, and many of them died from lack of water and nutrients. Because so many of these native oak trees were destroyed, even when the drought was over, the population would still have been tremendously decreased. The following years after this drought, the three counties were a part of a long-term study involving acorn production of different types of oak trees (Teijet,1993).