Drought and Ecological Flows Active

Many regions of the United States have recently experienced extreme droughts, fueled by prolonged periods of reduced precipitation and exceptionally warm temperatures. As temperatures warm, the frequency, severity, extent, and duration of droughts are expected to increase across North America, affecting both humans and natural ecosystems. To better manage and improve the resilience of our Nation’s communities and ecosystems in the face of drought, the USGS recently developed a USGS Integrated Drought Science Plan that calls for coordinated and integrated approaches to drought science and outlines a new path towards understanding drought impacts on society and ecosystems and advancing critical information necessary for decision-makers to take action in the coming decades. Specifically, the USGS Integrated Drought Science Plan

seeks to improve understanding of drought processes and impacts on human and natural systems through coordinated and multidisciplinary data collection, synthesis, analysis, and predictions generated from Mission Areas and a variety of partnerships.

The long-term goal is to provide support to stakeholders in need of new tools for enhancing drought resilience and adaptation. The USGS Integrated Drought Science Plan includes a step-wise approach to enable improved knowledge transfer and facilitate USGS response to specific actions identified in the Long-Term Drought Resilience Federal Action Plan, through: 

1. Assessing key data and platforms,
2. Strengthening observations across space and time,
3. Synthesizing datasets and models,
4. Forecasting vulnerable and resilient systems, and
5. Delivering decision tools and services.

​USGS scientists across Mission Areas have launched an initial-phase implementation strategy to advance the USGS Integrated Drought Science Plan across the United States. ​Scientists are developing and applying ​novel monitoring networks to evaluate and model ecohydrology — the variability of water availability and the effects of streamflow and stream temperature change on aquatic ecosystem dynamics — throughout landscapes, from headwater streams to larger rivers and lakes. This effort requires

• collecting ecohydrologic data to describe spatial and temporal variation in headwater stream hydrology,
• identifying key drivers influencing the duration and magnitude of biologically important streamflow events, and
• advancing our understanding of how hydrologic and thermal variation affects aquatic species and ecosystems.

These enhanced networks will aid in quantifying how climatic variation influences ecological processes across multiple biological (individuals to entire communities) and spatial scales (single streams to entire watersheds). Our efforts will contribute to technological advances for future monitoring, modeling, and ecosystems assessments of our Nation’s water resources​.