Since the National Drought Mitigation Center's founding in 1995, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has been one of the center's main supporters and collaborators. In fall 2023, the NDMC agreed to an additional one-year, $1.275 million cooperative agreement with the USDA's Office of the Chief Economist (OCE) that will address drought monitoring and much more through a series of projects.
This cooperative agreement provides an opportunity to support and enhance the U.S. Drought Monitor (USDM) and integrate the objectives of the USDA and the NDMC. It facilitates the development of new tools, outreach products and research that will provide stakeholders with valuable information to address drought-related issues and enhance drought resilience. This project also enables the NDMC to increase the availability and accessibility of USDM data and introduce new functionalities to the USDM in accordance with user needs.
The USDA Climate Hubs have an extensive network of stakeholders and communities that look to the Hubs for tools and information to address climate change, build resilience to drought and help them better prepare for, and respond to, drought emergencies. In collaboration with the Hubs, as well as the broader drought community, the NDMC will work to enhance outreach capacity, serve diverse user groups, produce new valuable information on drought and drought early warning and promote outreach to agricultural producers. Many of the priorities of this partnership were developed directly in collaboration with stakeholders and USDM users.