Drought monitoring: Lessons from the Western Canadian drought research initiative

Drought Impacts are tracked nationally because: • They establish an impacts baseline for monitoring — Climate change, policy change effects, landscape modification, etc • They direct relief in effective ways • They allow directed preparatory actions to be undertaken to reduce vulnerability in advance of the next drought • They are a basis for “ground truthing” indices • They provide a basis for quantifying drought losses • They provide information for estimating environmental consequences of drought. • (They could provide the same benefits if tracked globally).