Mapping the Spread of Drought Across the U.S

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/upshot/mapping-the-spread-of-drought-across-the-us.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&version=HpSumMediumMediaFloated&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

by mturmon • 12 years ago

98 43 12 years ago

nytimes.com

josephschmoe2• 12 years ago

I think there's a certain point at which we need to accept, and are accepting, that droughts will happen and that we need to prepare for them.

josephschmoe2• 12 years ago

We really, really need to stop growing lawn grass as a region.

Zikes2• 12 years ago

Funny enough, that would require changes to laws first: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/07/19/california-couple-faces...

I would love it if I could just throw a bunch of gravel down around my house and never have to worry about mowing again...

humanrebar2• 12 years ago

Well, there is a middle ground involving heartier plants that require little watering (and less maintenance to boot).

darklajid• 12 years ago

That's really ridiculous. You HAVE to have a "nice, green lawn"?

pacificmint• 12 years ago

You seem to be overestimating the amount water we use for lawns.

Agriculture uses 77% of all water in California. Residential is less than 14%, with half of that being indoor use.

I am all in favor of low water gardening, but you are not going to save us from the drought by getting rid of lawns.

humanrebar2• 12 years ago

Yeah, but agriculture feeds people. Lawns... look nice?

schiffern4• 12 years ago

I am all in favor of low water gardening, but you are not going to save us from the drought by getting rid of lawns.

That's why you replace the lawns with zero-maintenance[1] food forests.

Water? Rainwater irrigates the garden, suburbs having an abundance of 100% runoff surfaces like streets, roofs, etc that are usually mismanaged. Reforestation is critical, since ~80% of inland rainfall comes from transpiration.[2]

In deserts (read: much of California), minimizing evaporation is key. You also need to harvest the infrequent (and torrential) rains that do happen. If you have a floods followed months later by droughts, that should tell you that your water system isn't set up correctly. ;)

Global warming? How about instead of driving to the supermarket, having the produce section is right outside your door? Since an acre of farm-land is now CO2 positive, this is a big win.

Fertilizer? Municipal-scale composting of human wastes[3] can safely close the nutrient cycle. In a zero-maintenance system the "weeds" build soil, fix nitrogen, eat minerals, and attract support species like pest-eaters and pollinators (which are really "seed spreaders", since they let the plants re-seed themselves).

One challenge is that zero-maintenance food systems can look "messy" to the suburban eye

[1] Do you have time to tend a garden?

[2] http://www.science.uwaterloo.ca/~jjgibson/mypdfs/nature11983...

[3] e.g. http://www.milorganite.com/Using-Milorganite/What-is-It

ssmoot2• 12 years ago

I'm only 1 season in, but clover is nice.

A part of the grass thing I think is the fairly recent desire to have a pure Fescue/Bermuda/etc grass lawn.

I don't remember why, but a few months ago it popped into my head: You know, when I was a kid in Harlingen, there was clover everywhere. We'd pick a bit out of lawns as we roamed the neighborhood and chew on it. It's been decades since I've seen a neighborhood like that...

So I bought some clover seed and spread it around. Within just a couple weeks (4 or 5 days of daily watering at the outset to establish it) it was crazy green, spread through most of the lawn, while not being disruptive to the grass. The grass actually seems to be benefitting. It is chocking out weeds OTOH, so win win win. Overall my lawn is a whole lot brighter/greener/more-alive and it doesn't take more than the twice weekly watering schedule allowed by DFW's water conservation ordinances.

Now at the height of summer my lawn looks better than most of my neighbors and unlike the retirees' manicured lawns I'm not out there watering with a hose (a loophole the water conservation ordinance allows to please the demographic) daily.

I just thought it was noteworthy that there's a middle-ground between green painted gravel like Sun City, AZ, and golf-course lawns.

positr0n• 12 years ago

watering with a hose (a loophole...)

Are you sure that's a loophole? I've seen statistics that hand watering and drip irrigation systems are much less wasteful than sprinklers. And sprinklers are the only thing that are banned to twice-weekly in my region of DFW at least.

tanzam75• 12 years ago

I don't remember why, but a few months ago it popped into my head: You know, when I was a kid in Harlingen, there was clover everywhere. We'd pick a bit out of lawns as we roamed the neighborhood and chew on it. It's been decades since I've seen a neighborhood like that...

Clover was not considered a weed until the 1950s, when 2,4-D became the herbicide of choice.

Before then, seed companies intentionally added clover into their grass seed mixes. Clover will grow in nitrogen-deficient soil because it can fix nitrogen from the atmosphere. Grass cannot. If you wanted to avoid bare patches on your lawn, you needed the clover.

For example, the book Planting and Care of Lawns (1931) recommends planting lawns north of 35 N latitude with a mixture containing 5% clover: http://books.google.com/books?id=_vL1mNCfVDAC&pg=PA8

  For the greater part of region 1 the following mixture
  has proved quite satisfactory: Kentucky bluegrass 17 parts,
  redtop 2 parts, white clover 1 part by weight.

Once 2,4-D became popular, anything that it killed became regarded as a weed. This included clover, so clover became a weed.

fleitz• 12 years ago

Not growing rice may also help.

micro_cam• 12 years ago

We also need good alternatives. If you just leave disturbed earth or stop watering you wend up with nap weed and other noxious, not native weeds that contribute to desertification.

Developing a mature, drought tolerant landscape is difficult though there are some really interesting techniques used by permaculturists and others.

danso• 12 years ago

I think this excellent feature also serves as a great example of the shortcomings of maps. When I saw the tweeted screenshot of the most recent version of this map, I thought, "Oh shit, the drought is all over the place!"

However, actually going to the article and seeing the D3 animation...I see that it's...kind of the same as before? That is, still not great, but not overall more of a severe drought? Or is it? Just because it looks like a few areas have receded, I can't say for sure my eye is summing up all the drought-areas correctly...so even with the time-lapse, it's hard to tell if things have gotten worse, or better...

And of course, "better/worse" compared to the last few months is just one thing to care about...I'd also like to know how the drought level right now compares to last year, last decade, etc....and while we're looking at the past, I want to see what the rates of change were in those past timeframes, so I can judge whether or not the change from this month to last is drastic or expected (based on the cycle).

The bottom of the article contains just that chart (which is why I think this is such a great feature)...of course, you lose the geographical information, but at least the perspective is there. One minor improvement, with a small tradeoff in clutter, is to overlay a small part of the Palmer Drought Index chart on top (or near) the map, so that anyone visiting this map, now or in the future, can have some perspective at a glance on how bad the drought is...because without that frame of reference, just about any quantity of orange/red over a geographical map will be dramatic.

sliverstorm• 12 years ago

It's not a "shortcoming of maps". It's a difficulty in data representation. It's hard to clearly display more than two metrics in a chart. If geography is one of your key metrics, a map is perfect.

Retric• 12 years ago

The map is just for this summer, so it's not really trying to show a progression. Just which areas are in continuous drought vs a 1 off.

An annual map going back a 100 or so years would be vary interesting, but I don't think we have that data.

rplst8• 12 years ago

This. There may be some correlation between AGW and this drought, but this map is not doing a good job of illustrating that.

bjliu• 12 years ago

Mike Bostock and D3!

Zikes2• 12 years ago

Everything that guy touches is visualization gold. I wish I had half as much talent.

mturmon2• 12 years ago

Exactly! I submitted it because @mbostock (https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=mbostock) is a contributor here, and I think (?) this is his first direct appearance in the NYT. Congratulations!

dmarusic16• 12 years ago

Not true: Mike Bostock's stuff is all over the NYT website very frequently. He and Jeremy Ashkenas seem to be key players over there. Very inspiring work from both of them.

cowbell2• 12 years ago

Glad someone pointed out the really weak "Hacker News" tie in. I thought I left global warming wars behind at slashdot.

Why is it global warming warriors decide to invade every tech board? Isn't there a global warming board somewhere they can argue on?

dwaltrip• 12 years ago

You didn't have to click on the link.

Also, your categorization of "global warming warriors" seems a bit senseless, as if there are not regular folks on HN who happen to also be interested in climate change.

cwal37• 12 years ago

A few water and the southwest related articles:

Water and Texas: http://www.mensjournal.com/magazine/print-view/who-stole-the...

Arizona and wildfires (and water): http://www.azcentral.com/news/wildfires/yarnell/arizona-wild...

SoCal's current water management (shorter than the other articles): http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-famiglietti-south...

TravisLS• 12 years ago

What's the evidence for the link between west coast droughts in recent years and global warming? (I'm not trying to start a debate, just genuinely asking).

leCapitalist• 12 years ago

I was left wondering the same thing. The author did not present evidence that global warming is the cause, and from the Palmer Drought Index data, the current drought appears no more severe than those of the 30s and 50s.

guelo2• 12 years ago

The evidence given in the article is "A 10-year average of Palmer values has been increasing for most of the last 20 years, which is to say that the country is in the midst of one of its most sustained periods of increasing drought on record."

If the new normal is what used to be severe peaks than the west is in trouble. But looking at that graph, especially the non-smoothed light-grey line, I'd say we need another 10 years of data to be sure that we are in a new pattern.

stiles• 12 years ago

Exactly. The recent drought on the west coast can be attributed to a very massive high pressure system sitting off the coast deflecting away much needed rain storms. http://www.mercurynews.com/science/ci_24904396/california-dr... --- Is this "resilient ridge" caused by global warming/climate change? Haven't seen any evidence that links the two yet. If El Nino doesn't produce a very very wet this winter, then a lot of change will be coming to the west.

crygin• 12 years ago

I apologize for not having time right now to track down primary sources for you, but if you're interested in learning more about the current research specifically on this drought and climate, look up stuff related to the position and strength of the North Pacific High, how it's affected by the Arctic Oscillation (and decoupling of the AO from the North Atlantic Oscillation), and how those are related to extreme jet stream configurations (regarding which there is emerging evidence for a relationship with Arctic sea ice extent).

And if you find good stuff, post the links!

schiffern4• 12 years ago

Dr. Jennifer Francis at Rutgers has a great talk on the polar vortex and climate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETpm9JAdfcs (40m, polar vortex starts at 24m)

Full unedited: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtRvcXUIyZg (1h24m)

clumsysmurf• 12 years ago

I found the book "The West without Water: What Past Floods, Droughts, and Other Climatic Clues Tell Us about Tomorrow" very informative.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0520268555

The authors describe their paleoclimatology research, what the water in the West has typically been, and how global warming may impact things (for the worse) - with some tips on mitigation.

mathattack• 12 years ago

I recall reading that Napa and Sonoma are going downhill as a result, and that 10-15 more years of this will make the Washington and Oregon wines just as good, if not better. I hope the Microsoft millionaires are investing in wine country. :-)

Mapping the Spread of Drought Across the U.S

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