Drought Impacts Reporting through Collaboration: CoCoRaHS and the National Drought Mitigation Center

CoCoRaHS (The Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow Network) provides a platform and data entry and display system for individuals and communities around the country to observe and report precipitation from their own back yards. Volunteers of all ages measure rain, hail and snow using simple low-cost rain gauges and hail pads. These observations are collected and made available on the CoCoRaHS website: www.cocorahs.org. With thousands of volunteers now sending in precipitation measurements each day, CoCoRaHS is becoming an important source of data for drought monitoring.

CoCoRaHS has recently begun a collaborative project with the NDMC (the National Drought Mitigation Center) to help improve and expand our country's drought impact reporting capacity. In addition to submitting quantitative gauge rainfall observations, volunteers can also report the impacts they are observing in their communities such as impacts on crop production, natural vegetation, surface and ground water levels, and wildlife -- just to name a few. The resulting reports are integrated into the NDMC's "Drought Impact Reporter": http://droughtreporter.unl.edu/. In our presentation we will look at how this is being accomplished, and will show examples of the various reports being gathered and the effect this is having on the assessment of drought.