Global warming and the associated rise in extreme temperatures substantially increase the chance of concurrent droughts and heat waves. The 2014 California drought is an archetype of an event characterized by not only low precipitation but also extreme high temperatures. From the raging wildfires, to record low storage levels and snowpack conditions, the impacts of this event can be felt throug...

This article provides a review and synthesis of scholarly knowledge of Depression-era droughts on the North American Great Plains, a time and place known colloquially as the Dust Bowl era or the Dirty Thirties. Recent events, including the 2008 financial crisis, severe droughts in the US corn belt, and the release of a popular documentary film, have spawned a resurgence in public interest in th...

Trees alter their use and allocation of nutrients in response to drought, and changes in soil nutrient cycling and trace gas flux (N2 O and CH4 ) are observed when experimental drought is imposed on forests. In extreme droughts, trees are increasingly susceptible to attack by pests and pathogens, which can lead to major changes in nutrient flux to the soil. Extreme droughts often lead to more c...

groundwater drought is a natural hazard that develops when groundwater systems are affected by climatical drought, when climatical drought occures, first groundwater recharge, later groundwater levels and groundwater discharge decrease. the origin of drought is a deficit in precipitation and that takes place in all the elements that comprise the hydrological cycle (flow in the rivers, soil mois...

Introduction Droughts are a frequent occurrence in South Africa’s arid and semi-arid rangelands and can have severe ecological and economic consequences. While these may be short-term and followed by recovery during subsequent years of higher rainfall, in some cases droughts can trigger substantial and irreversible ecological and socio-economic changes. Desertification, in the form of reduced p...

Forecast increases in the frequency, intensity, and duration of droughts with climate change may have extreme and extensive ecological consequences. There are currently hundreds of published, ongoing, and new drought experiments worldwide aimed to assess ecological sensitivity to drought and identify the mechanisms governing resistance and resilience. To date, the results from these experiments...

In most cases authors are permitted to post their version of the article (e.g. in Word or Tex form) to their personal website or institutional repository. Authors requiring further information regarding Elsevier's archiving and manuscript policies are encouraged to visit: s u m m a r y Current drought information is based on indices that do not capture the joint behaviors of hydrologic variable...