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A dry lake during a drought.

AUBURN UNIVERSITY, Ala. ­– Flash droughts occur frequently in Alabama. The Alabama Cooperative Extension System and its partners have teamed together to tackle drought impacts in real time thanks to the Alabama Drought Reach Program (ADR). This new system will allow professionals to capture information on drought’s effects on Alabama agriculture more efficiently and accurately.

About the Program

Alabama Drought ReachAccording to Rachel McGuire, an Alabama Extension water resources outreach coordinator, ADR is an excellent new program culminated from two years of coordination and hard work.

“ADR is a brainchild of the Auburn University Water Resources Center (AUWRC) and the Alabama Office of the State Climatologist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville,” McGuire said. “The program’s vision is to better document drought’s agricultural impacts in Alabama, resulting in a more informed scientific and agricultural community.”

As a part of the program, McGuire said personnel from Alabama Extension and the Alabama Agricultural Experiment Station will collect all the data for the ADR monitoring system. The program’s primary goal is to create more awareness regarding the impact of drought’s effects on agriculture. The program also has a unique opportunity to provide timely and relevant data to the Office of the State Climatologist.

The ADR program has the potential to assist many professional organizations and the public–especially farmers. Another goal of ADR is to make the program’s database available to policy and decision makers as a reference. This allows them to have the latest science-based, unbiased information at their disposal when creating policies.

“This program will also better inform the state climatologist by providing agricultural impact data to their suite of datasets and information they use to inform the U.S. Drought Monitor (USDM),” McGuire said.

McGuire also said the data gathered from ADR builds Alabama Extension’s capacity to provide drought impact literacy as well as drought preparedness. In turn, this will help farmers, landowners and land managers.

Everyone Can Contribute

ACF Drought Webinar featuring Rachel McGuire and partners.Even if you are not a drought professional, McGuire encourages farmers and the public to consider participating in drought-monitoring efforts. The best way to do this is to provide local information to the Condition Monitoring Observer Reports (CMOR) system. These reports help the National Drought Mitigation Center create the USDM report every Thursday.

“Although the ADR impact monitoring will be conducted by professionals, farmers and the public can contribute to the U.S. Drought Monitor by submitting these CMOR reports,” McGuire said.

The CMOR tool collects drought-related information from users including their state and county of residence, date and other impact questions.

Reaching New Heights

The ADR program is an example of how partnerships can efficiently drive the collection of agricultural data. In 2023, Alabama Extension aims to reach new heights of drought research. Visit www.aces.edu or aaes.auburn.edu/wrc/ for more information about drought and water resources.