Geosciences Professor Develops System To Predict Droughts

A Texas A&M University geography professor is developing a drought-prediction system that could benefit everyone from ranchers in South Texas to weekend gardeners in Kansas. Steven Quiring has received a $486,000 award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to develop a robust soil-moisture dataset for the Great Plains, one of the country’s most fertile but fickle climate regions. The Great Plains stretch from the Rio Grande to the Canadian border, Quiring says, and despite extremes in weather and sporadic but deadly periods of drought, the region’s annual agricultural production alone accounts for more than $40 billion a year. On the other hand, he says the 1988 drought accounted for a $30 billion loss in agribusiness. The ability to pinpoint the moisture in the soil at any given time and place will help scientists better predict drought conditions and take steps to lessen its effects. The content of moisture in the soil plays a critical role, Quiring says, in the global carbon cycle, and in weather and climate patterns. Drier soil means less moisture escapes into the atmosphere, triggering more radiant heat returned to the soil and exacerbating already dry conditions. “In other words, drought begets drought.” Soil characteristics such as compactness, vegetation, and the angle of slopes and subsequent run-off further complicate the picture. “Knowing the amount of moisture in the soil at any given time is one of the keys to predicting oncoming droughts,” Quiring says...more