Estimating the economic impacts of drought

The need for the development of a comprehensive and consistemt methodology for determining the economic impacts of drought across all necessary sectors and scales is discussed. This methodology needs to be able to capture the complex nature of drought impacts, including the direct and indirect drought losses. The major advantage to understanding the economic impacts of drought will be to highlight the full magnitude of drought losses, and encourage more local, state, and federal officials to increase the efforts in drought planning and mitigation. Accurate drought loss estimates and mitigation projections can provide cost/benefit ratios that many officials rely on to make their decisions.