Location: Agroecosystem Management Research
Project Number: 3042-21660-001-017-A
Project Type: Cooperative Agreement
Start Date: Jun 1, 2026
End Date: May 31, 2030
Objective:
This cooperative agreement provides an opportunity to support and enhance the U.S. Drought Monitor (USDM) and integrate the research and service objectives of USDA-ARS and the National Drought Mitigation Center (NDMC). It facilitates the enhancement of existing tools, development of new tools, outreach/educational products and drought-related research and services that will provide a variety of USDA partners with usable information to address drought-related issues aimed at building better drought resilience and profitability for producers.
The Cooperator will work with the USDA-ARS to enhance its role in providing research and information services to address the needs of producers, resource managers, and land managers in the agricultural sector, as well as the needs of Extension educators and other agricultural advisors who support agricultural drought resilience, and across other USDA agencies. Ongoing research with the ARS will also facilitate collaboration between regional partners and the various USDA service centers, to articulate regional and national priorities and to develop new tools and outreach products, in addition to enhancing those already in existence, particularly the USDM.
The work plan of this agreement includes tasks which will result in the validation, enhancement, or geographic expansion of existing tools, the building/strengthening of drought learning networks and peer-to-peer information sharing, increasing resilience capacity addressing drought, and improved communication of drought information to USDA and Congress as requested.
The cooperative agreement will also enhance the USDM through new tools and increased data availability, and efficiency for those who participate in the weekly process of developing the USDM. This will, in turn, extend the outreach and services capacity of both organizations, individually and through collaboration, and provide a venue for regional drought services and extension partners, and other regional partners both within and outside USDA, as well as feedback, guidance and co-design in regard to the application of tools and information developed by the NDMC.
Objective 1: Provide operational support for the USDM (and derivative products and services), authors, and technical staff.
Objective 2: Provide contracting support for hardware/software, cloud services, programming, professional services, and cybersecurity services.
Objective 3: Develop tools that enhance the core ARS research mission related to drought planning, preparedness, and agricultural impacts.
Approach:
Since its inception in 1999, the USDM has become the state-of-the-science and “go to” resource for drought monitoring and assessment in the U.S., helping decision makers, policy makers and those affected by drought be in sync with drought conditions and potential needs. USDM authors include scientists from the NDMC, USDA, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) who work with a national network of ~400+ experts using a "convergence of evidence" approach to distill in situ, modeled and remotely sensed data into a single weekly report. Science-based environmental data, weather monitoring, and local condition observations provide the foundation for the USDM. The physical indicators integrated into the USDM include rainfall, humidity, vegetation health, soil moisture, groundwater levels, snowpack, reservoir levels, drought indices, and other data that capture components of the water cycle. Each week’s production of the map is an intensive, collaborative effort to synthesize many sources of complex, sometimes conflicting, information. Due to the high stakes of agricultural producers and land managers it is incumbent on all involved to ensure the map has a high degree of accuracy and that all regions of the country are fairly represented.
The ease of interpretation of the USDM and its associated narrative, and the vast amount of data and maps published each week (nearly 40,000) along with the main map, has made it the first stop for agricultural producers and land managers, policymakers, and media who want to learn about drought conditions. In any given year, the NDMC directly responds to 1,000+ inquiries directly related to the USDM. Since the 2008 Farm Bill, USDA has used the USDM to trigger several drought relief programs (and other applications) in excess of ~$30 billion.
Recent NDMC research has found that on-the-ground natural resource managers, ranging from farmers and ranchers to forest and water managers, need additional guidance in connecting agricultural drought monitoring data to operational and strategic decisions that enable them to minimize impacts of drought. Agricultural producers need more information on management strategies, tailored across varied cropping and livestock systems, which can lead to action when monitoring data indicates drought. Forest and grassland managers have specific needs for integrating drought monitoring tools into their complex decision-making environments. In addition, agricultural advisors are asking for help collaborating across states and regions to identify and develop effective education and outreach resources.
Priority tasks in this agreement have been developed directly in collaboration with USDA personnel, stakeholders and USDM users to provide every user with useful and usable information, data, and maps they need in their decision-making process. This support tool provides real-time existing and developing drought conditions, which improves producers’ ability to be resilient and establishes eligibility for disaster designations and relief.