Equipping your personal drought monitoring tool box

Monitoring drought is a task made difficult by the fact that droughts vary by intensity, duration, spatial extent, and the impacts they cause. Initially, scientists developed a series of drought indices designed to monitor drought for specific purposes. Recently, a consensus is forming that a better drought monitoring approach is one that puts together an ensemble of indicators rather than relying on one indicator alone. The appropriate analogy in this technique is the collection of the appropriate tools to place into a drought monitoring tool box. Improvements in technology, such as the Internet and GIS, have made this approach possible. This article provides an overview of the drought monitoring tools available for a tool box, and ends with some suggestions for equipping a specific tool box for monitoring droughts in regions with expansive soils.