State agencies, non-governmental organizations and others may conduct post-drought assessments to better understand how drought affected agriculture, health, food security, energy, communities and other areas of interest, and to document responses and outcomes. These assessments are extremely valuable for learning from one drought to the next, but they can be hard to find if you don’t know that they are there. This archive is intended to become a permanent repository for post-drought assessments. To recommend additional resources for this list, please email ndmc@unl.edu.
State-level
Alabama
Legislative response to drought, 1955: Alabama’s Water Resources, A Plan for the Creation of a Temporary Commission to Study the State’s Water Resources and to Develop a Water Policy for the State
California
Public Policy Institute of California, August 2015: What if California's Drought Continues?
California Legislative Analyst’s Office, February 2016: The State’s Drought Response
University of California-Davis, August 2015: Economic Analysis of the 2015 Drought for California Agriculture
Pacific Institute, February 2016: Impacts of California’s Ongoing Drought: Hydro-electricity Generation 2015 Update
California Natural Resources Agency, 2021: Report to the legislature on the 2012-2016 drought
The Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) maintains a regular focus on drought, including many assessments of impacts and related solutions.
UC Davis and the PPIC also provide ongoing assessment: Impacts of the Drought to California Agriculture
Florida
Florida Geological Survey, 1962: The Drought of 1954-64, Its Effect on Florida’s Surface-Water Resources
Georgia
Water Use and Conservation Committee, 1955: A Report on the Historical, Physical, and Legal Aspects of Water in Georgia
State Division of Conservation, 1955: Surface Water Resources of Georgia During the Drought of 1954
Missouri
Missouri Department of Natural Resources, 2019: Missouri 2018 Drought Response Final Report
Oklahoma
Shideler et al.: The Economic Impact of the 2011 Drought
Gateway to Oklahoma History: Oklahoma Soil Conservation Service photos
Texas
Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts, February 2012: The Impact of the 2011 Drought and Beyond
Anderson, Welch and Robinson, 2012: Agricultural Impacts of Texas’s Driest Year on Record
Scanlon, Duncan and Reedy, 2013: Drought and the Water-Energy Nexus in Texas
Washington
Washington State Department of Ecology, 2017: 2015 Drought and Agriculture
Regional
National Drought Mitigation Center, 2013: From Too Much to Too Little: How the central U.S. drought of 2012 evolved out of one of the most devastating floods on record in 2011 | Executive Summary
Western States Water Council, August 2013: Measuring, Quantifying and Reporting Drought Impacts
National Drought Mitigation Center: The Dust Bowl
National Integrated Drought Information System, 2019: Flash Drought: Lessons Learned from the 2017 Drought Across the U.S. Northern Plains and Canadian Prairies (full report)
Hoell, A., and Coauthors, Lessons Learned from the 2017 Flash Drought Across the U.S. Northern Great Plains and Canadian Prairies. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., doi: https://doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-19-0272.1.
Office of the Washington State Climatologist, UW Climate Impacts Group, Oregon State Climatologist, Idaho Department of Water Resources, 2021: 2020 Pacific Northwest Water Year Impacts Assessment
Konrad, C., and P. Knox, 2016: The Southeastern Drought and Wildfires of 2016
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Sept. 2022: Drought Impacts on Hydroelectric power Generation in the Western United States
National
USDA Economic Research Service: U.S. Drought 2012: Farm and Food Impacts
Roger Pulwarty Congressional Testimony April 2013: Drought and the Effect on Energy and Water Management Decisions
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Climatic Data Center: Billion-Dollar Disasters
U.S. Department of Agriculture Southwest Climate Hub, interactive map of indemnified losses by county, year and cause of loss, including drought: AgRisk Viewer
Library of Congress historic photos, including from the Dust Bowl
Continental
The European Drought Centre hosts the European Drought Impact Report Inventory (EDII) to disseminate information about past European drought impacts.
Global
The World Meteorological Organization’s Atlas of Mortality and Economic Losses from Weather, Climate and Water Extremes (1970-2019) attributed 650,000 deaths to drought during those years, mostly in developing countries.
To recommend additional resources for this list, please email ndmc@unl.edu.