USGS Seeking User Input to a Drought Forecasting Service
The US Geological Survey (USGS) Water Resources Mission Area is developing an open-source web application for release in FY25 to publicly post forecasts of streamflow drought conditions at gaged locations across the continental United States. The agency is planning to deliver forecasts 7, 14, 30, 60, 90 days in advance.
They would like to understand how users might make use of these drought forecasts to aid decision making for their farms or businesses and what their needs are, to help them to design the appropriate interface.
Below are five questions, along with the definition of drought they are using. If you are able to send the agency your answers before September 25th, that would be great. Please feel free to answer as many or as few of these questions as you like or have time for.
Streamflow drought is defined as observations of streamflow that fall below a given threshold for that stream gage location and time of year. The thresholds we are using are tied to streamflow percentiles where a 20th percentile threshold corresponds to a moderate drought, a 10th percentile threshold corresponds to a severe drought, and a 5th percentile threshold corresponds to an extreme drought. A USGS research team is building models to predict streamflow drought forecasts for 7, 14, 30, 60, and 90 days.
For more information on the difference between meteorological, agricultural and hydrological drought as well as how droughts are identified using percentiles please see: What is streamflow drought? (usgs.gov)
- How does this definition of streamflow drought fit into your perception and definitions of drought you already use?
- What decisions do you or your organization need to make that require streamflow drought forecast information, assuming this definition?
- What reporting units do you require to support decision making? For example, percentiles vs volumetric flow (cfs).
- Which forecast timescales are most valuable to you?
- How often would you check streamflow drought forecasts?
Please send your responses to their questions to Shirley Leung at sleung@usgs.gov.