“Let’s play a game,” a friend suggested last weekend as we walked through stands of brown, brittle trees on Stewart’s Creek trail to San Luis Peak in southwestern Colorado. The game was called “find the living tree,” and like “I spy,” we’d scan the landscape for green leaves.
We chuckled grimly. The truth she spoke in suggesting this made-up game was almost poetic, acknowledging both the despondency we all felt looking at the tinder-dry forest and our need to find something hopeful to cling to.
Beetle Kill trees
A field of Colorado's beetle-killed pines.
Hope, however, can be elusive. In this summer of continued drought with its stories of irrigation ditches turned off early in the season and wildfires burning an unprecedented acreage, I wanted to find something positive to report, some silver lining to all this serious gloom.
I thought I’d struck gold when I stumbled upon the National Drought Mitigation Center’s publically accessible Drought Impact Reporter. Since 2005, the Reporter, a tool of the University of Nebraska’s School of Natural Resources, has been collating reports of drought. The Drought Impact Reporter stores thousands of media reports, research publications, and citizen observations from across the United States. Each report is tagged with the type of impact observed. Together, these reports can offer a broad picture for researchers and policy-makers as they assess drought’s impact on such sectors as human health, the economy, water quality, and wildlife.
Drought Impact Monitor
We chuckled grimly. The truth she spoke in suggesting this made-up game was almost poetic, acknowledging both the despondency we all felt looking at the tinder-dry forest and our need to find something hopeful to cling to.
Beetle Kill trees
A field of Colorado's beetle-killed pines.
Hope, however, can be elusive. In this summer of continued drought with its stories of irrigation ditches turned off early in the season and wildfires burning an unprecedented acreage, I wanted to find something positive to report, some silver lining to all this serious gloom.
I thought I’d struck gold when I stumbled upon the National Drought Mitigation Center’s publically accessible Drought Impact Reporter. Since 2005, the Reporter, a tool of the University of Nebraska’s School of Natural Resources, has been collating reports of drought. The Drought Impact Reporter stores thousands of media reports, research publications, and citizen observations from across the United States. Each report is tagged with the type of impact observed. Together, these reports can offer a broad picture for researchers and policy-makers as they assess drought’s impact on such sectors as human health, the economy, water quality, and wildlife.
Drought Impact Monitor
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