The Economic Impacts of Drought on Communities in the US High Plains Aquifer Region: A Longitudinal Analysis from 1960-2014

Historically, droughts have been known to have devastating impacts on human wellbeing, the ability to produce food, as well as hunt, gather, and carry out other social and economic activities. The development of modern... [ view full abstract ]

Historically, droughts have been known to have devastating impacts on human wellbeing, the ability to produce food, as well as hunt, gather, and carry out other social and economic activities. The development of modern farming (specifically irrigation technologies) and diversified local economic systems are understood to have mitigated the impacts of drought.  Specifically, groundwater pumping technologies and conveyance of surface water from a distance can mitigate the impact of drought on agricultural productivity, quality of life, and economic development in specific places.  While there is much scholarship on the historical and immediate impacts of drought, this presentation will investigate how these impacts change as technologies and governance systems are applied and adopted.  We use a political ecology frame to analyze the interaction between biophysical factors, governance, technology, and social power.  We do this by combining data from the US Census and modeled drought data from the High Plains Aquifer area, to calculate the impact of periodic droughts on county level indicators of economic wellbeing from 1960-2014.  We will correlate our findings with the number of irrigated acres and amount of groundwater pumping.  We expect to that drought had significant economic impacts in all counties in 1960, but the impact was lessened as groundwater extraction increased.  We will look at both the impact on the agricultural sector, per se, and county level economic indicators.  Since the late 1990s, we expect to find the overall, county-level, economic impacts vary across the region.