Introduction
Drought is a calamity connected with long-term high temperatures and low precipitation. While it is mostly safe for humans, it is perilous for agricultural plants, leading to decreases in yield, which can, in turn, cause hunger. Drought risks and damage increase due to global warming and other problems connected with human activity. Therefore, these risks should be analyzed and evaluated to understand how people can prevent their detrimental effects.
Overview
Droughts occur when there is a lack of water in the area and a high temperature. Plants in a specific area, in both agricultural and natural ecosystems, adapted to certain water regimes, and drastic water shortages yield fewer crops or even die (Naumann, Cammalleri, Mentaschi, & Feyen, 2021). There are no easy ways to calculate drought resilience and how regulate precipitation to reduce losses, and there are additional expenses for artificial precipitation (Meza et al., 2020; Tigkas, Vangelis, & Tsakiris, 2018). As fields, swamps, and forests are destroyed and new cities are built, ecosystems become more vulnerable to drought s (Azadi et al., 2018).
Droughts are especially detrimental to natural ecosystems, and less attention is usually paid to their protection, which may lead to ecological hazards and increase drought risks even more (Cammalleri et al., 2020). Local farmers who grow crops for themselves are highly vulnerable and can lose their primary source of food and money. Therefore, drought risks need to be thoroughly analyzed to conclude how to reduce them.
Analysis
Crop yield reduces due to the drought effect up to several percent. Their impact is different in local areas with various climates, according to the United States Drought Monitor (USDM). When precipitation is good, the loss can be only 0.1 – 0.3% per year, while the median loss in the U.S. is up to 1.2%, and the most significant loss is as high as 8% (Kuwayama, Thompson, Bernknopf, Zaitchik, & Vail, 2018). Therefore, there are areas highly influenced by droughts, and local food shortages can be typical for them. Ecological hazards caused by droughts increase their chances further, and therefore, the risk has the tendency to grow (Cammalleri et al., 2020).
The Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) is used to evaluate how much water each plant consumes at any given temperature, to calculate how to save crops from droughts (Tigkas, Vangelis, & Tsakiris, 2018). However, it is important to note that such indices should be carefully calculated for any plant (Meza et al., 2020). Therefore, drought is a complex phenomenon, and plant resilience to it should be thoroughly studied for each plant to decrease losses.
Drought analysis in various countries, such as the U.S., EU countries, China, and India, shows that the drought risk increases worldwide. In Europe, the current losses due to drought s are about 9 billion euros per year, and it is projected that they can reach 65 billion by 2100 due to global warming (Naumann, Cammalleri, Mentaschi, & Feyen, 2021). Agricultural land conversion (ALC), which is widely used to build new city districts, increases drought effects and, in addition, leads to ground salinization and decreased fertility. In India, for example, this practice decreased crop yield by 22%, affecting only 2% of farmlands (Azadi et al., 2018).
Southern countries are especially vulnerable to global warming problems and can face severe food shortages: Mediterranean Europe countries counts for almost 70% of all drought-related agricultural losses in the EU (Cammalleri et al., 2020). As mentioned, governments and policy-makers pay little effort to protect the ecosystem, as they often see no benefit in it. Thus, droughts are detrimental to crop agriculture, plant resiliency needs to be studied more, and ecological damage caused by them leads to increased risks.
Synthesis
Drought activity is detrimental and mostly regional: while there are prosperous regions where their effect is low, other areas can experience severe food shortages. The cases of EU countries and U.S. states illustrate it clearly: Mediterranean Europe and Midwest states undergo exceptional food losses due to droughts (Cammalleri et al., 2020; Kuwayama, Thompson, Bernknopf, Zaitchik, & Vail, 2018). To cope with the effects of drought, each plant’s water regimen is carefully studied, and researchers use various indices to evaluate how much water should be used during the drought (Tigkas, Vangelis, & Tsakiris, 2018).
Another critical point is that drought activity is rising due to global warming; therefore, future drought losses depend on humanity’s actions. New city district building, landscape changing, and atmospheric pollution destroy ecosystems and reduce drought resilience, which should be taken into account during any human activity to reduce drought losses (Azadi et al., 2018; Cammalleri et al., 2020; Naumann, Cammalleri, Mentaschi, & Feyen, 2021). Therefore, droughts can be managed by researching and improving ecosystem resilience and decreasing environmental damage, and their effects can be reduced by thoroughly studying the plants’ water regimens.
Conclusion
Droughts are dangerous for crop yield, and the hazard is highly different in various countries and regions. There is no easy way to solve the problem, as plants’ responses to water shortages are different for any plant at any given moment. Extensive studies of each crop plant in various conditions are necessary to understand how to precipitate them in case of drought to reduce losses.
In addition, human activity leads to environmental pollution, global warming, landscape change, and ecosystem diversity losses, which further increase drought risks and effects. The more droughts there are today, the more there will be in the future, and biodiversity management is necessary to reduce these issues. To summarize, droughts and plant responses to them are both complex phenomena that should be thoroughly studied to prevent crop losses and save ecosystems.
References
Azadi, H., Keramati, P., Taheri, F., Rafiaani, P., Teklemariam, D., Gebrehiwot, K., … Witlox, F. (2018). Agricultural land conversion: Reviewing drought impacts and coping strategies. International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, 31, 184–195. Web.
Cammalleri, C., Naumann, L., Mentaschi, G., De Roo, B., Feyen, L., Formetta, G., … Bisselink, B. (2020). Global warming and drought impacts in the EU. JRC PESETA IV Project. Web.
Kuwayama, Y., Thompson, A., Bernknopf, R., Zaitchik, B., & Vail, P. (2018). Estimating the impact of drought on agriculture using the U.S. drought monitor. American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 101(1), 193–210. Web.
Meza, I., Siebert, S., Döll, P., Kusche, J., Herbert, C., Eyshi Rezaei, E., … Hagenlocher, M. (2020). Global-scale drought risk assessment for agricultural systems. Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences, 20(2), 695–712. Web.
Naumann, G., Cammalleri, C., Mentaschi, L., & Feyen, L. (2021). Increased economic drought impacts in Europe with anthropogenic warming. Nature Climate Change, 11, 485–491. Web.
Tigkas, D., Vangelis, H., & Tsakiris, G. (2018). Drought characterisation based on an agriculture-oriented standardised precipitation index. Theoretical and Applied Climatology, 135(3-4), 1435–1447. Web.