A scoping review of drought impacts on health and society in North America
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A scoping review of drought impacts on health and society in North America Margaret Sugg 1 & Jennifer Runkle 2 & Ronnie Leeper 2 & Hannah Bagli 1 & Andrew Golden 1 & Leah Hart Handwerger 1 & Tatiana Magee 1 & Camila Moreno 1 & Rhiannon Reed-Kelly 1 & Michelle Taylor 1 & Sarah Woolard 1 Received: 26 May 2020 / Accepted: 25 August 2020/ # Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract
Drought is a highly destructive natural hazard with wide-ranging impacts on water security, agriculture, energy, and human health. Unlike most natural hazards, droughts can develop anywhere, evolve rapidly within a month or slowly over a season, and span months to decades without a clear beginning or end. Few studies investigate the direct link between drought and drought-related impacts on health and society, and little research has identified critical science gaps in the field of drought-society. This scoping review aims to explore the societal implications of drought and identify knowledge gaps for future drought-society studies. We performed a PRISMA scoping review with a fourelement search model on articles published since 2010. We extracted drought impacts data from 74 articles. Results were synthesized into three main topical areas examining public health impacts, water quality impacts, and water quantity impacts. While studies were heterogeneous in terms of objectives and methods, they illustrated the full breadth of drought impacts. The current body of evidence lacks a standard set of drought indices that can be readily applied to evaluate and monitor societal impacts due to drought. The challenge of defining drought limits a holistic understanding of drought effects and recovery time. More interdisciplinary collaborations are needed to establishes community-wide consensus on the identification of relevant hydrological indicators that best describe an adverse outcome is an understudied research priority. Keywords Drought impacts . North America . Scoping Review
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-02002848-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
* Margaret Sugg [email protected] Extended author information available on the last page of the article
Climatic Change
1 Introduction As vulnerability to drought increases because of mounting pressure on water availability and climatic changes, the scientific community faces a significant challenge producing comprehensive, timely, and accurate assessments of drought-induced impacts (Wilhite et al. 2017). Globally, the drought impacts from climate change are still uncertain due to the large uncertainties in projected water availability (Greve and Seneviratne 2015) and the lack of direct observations (e.g., Africa, South America), the methodological uncertainties, and the geographical inconsistencies in the precipitation trends (IPCC 2013). The potential for drought impacts is heightened by population growth, urban expansion, aging or deteriorating water infrastructure, and environmental pr
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