BACKGROUND

New Mexico has suffered periods of drought since prehistoric times and the collapse of many early civilizations in New Mexico can be traced to periods of extended drought. Since the 1900s extended periods of drought have devastated the State during 1900-1910, 1932-1937, 1945-1956, and 1974-1977. The last short duration drought that affected New Mexico occurred during 1996 and prompted the State to prepare a Drought Emergency Plan for New Mexico during that year.

In an effort to be more proactive and anticipate the effects of drought, New Mexico initiated in 1998 a planning effort to develop a more comprehensive drought plan that would not only address drought response but would also try to address foreseeable problems in advance of the drought. To emphasize the need for New Mexico to have a pro-active approach to drought planning, Governor Gary Johnson, on March 11, 1998, directed all New Mexico Cabinet and Department heads to support proactive drought management at the local level to protect the natural resources and the economic base of New Mexico by emphasizing actions for drought monitoring, assessment, preparedness, mitigation and assistance.

Numerous drought plans from various states were reviewed, and interviews were conducted with drought planners and individuals who have survived previous New Mexico drought occurrences. These interviews and analyses revealed that many previous drought plans provided "triggering" mechanisms or thresholds that were intended to initiate specific actions by various agencies, but when these thresholds were reached or exceeded, the prescribed response was rarely implemented in a timely or effective manner. The responsibility for the failure of drought plans to achieve identified goals lies less with the plan than with the decision makers who lacked the resolve to implement elements of the plan, which deals largely with the psychology of drought management. It is hoped that by using an integrated approach to drought planning New Mexico’s Drought Plan will serve as a viable, flexible approach to mitigate the problems of drought on the state of New Mexico.

The purpose of this plan is to provide New Mexico with a framework for an integrated approach to minimize the impacts of drought on its people and resources. The plan outlines both long term and short measures that are to be used to mitigate the effects of drought. To accomplish this goal the New Mexico Drought Plan:

1. Identifies the local, state , federal and private sector entities that are involved with state drought management and defines their responsibilities.

2. Defines a process to be followed in addressing drought related activities, including monitoring, impact assessment, and response.

3. Identifies long and short term activities that can be implemented to prevent and mitigate drought impacts.

4. Acts as a catalyst for creation and implementation of local drought planning and response efforts.

The New Mexico Drought Plan is intended to compliment on-going water resource planning efforts of regional water planners and existing regional water resource plans. The New Mexico Regional Water Planning Guidelines clearly list drought planning as an important item of discussion in any water planning effort and it is anticipated that measures and actions outlined in this drought plan will be incorporated into existing or future water planning efforts.

In designing the action items of the New Mexico Drought Plan, every effort has been made to use existing partnerships and lines of communication and the input of local New Mexico stakeholders in providing feedback as to the effectiveness of planned or implemented mitigation measures.

The timely dissemination of drought related data plays an important role in assuring the effectiveness of the New Mexico Drought Plan. A targeted effort has been made to develop an information dissemination system using target customer lists for E-mail and FAX communication systems. Existing agency newsletters have been combined with Internet Websites of the Office of the State Engineer, NM Agricultural Statistics, New Mexico State Climatologist, and the US Geological Survey to communicate drought information to the public. Prepared radio and TV spots have also been developed to address the major drought affected customer groups. These efforts are designed to assure the timely delivery of needed data to not only the State’s decision makers but also to the general public.

Because of the ever-changing staffs of state, federal and local governments, and the need to periodically evaluate and revise the New Mexico Drought Plan, two important decisions as to the Plan’s format have been made to achieve these goals:

a. To guarantee flexibility in the Plan’s content, a loose-leaf format has been chosen as opposed to a bound document. The loose-leaf format will allow for the modification of the original Plan with the least amount of cost and delay.

b. To allow access of the Plan’s content to the largest possible audience, without the need for massive document publication costs, the entire New Mexico Drought Plan has been placed on the Internet, with the main location being the New Mexico Climate Center WebSite (http://weather.nmsu.edu). Timely updates on the status and progress of the Monitoring Work Group and the Impact Assessment Sub-Groups will be posted to the WebSite. It is hoped that this process will allow the greatest flexibility for the review, modification and use of the data in the Plan.

Drought is a complex physical and social process of widespread significance and is not usually a Statewide phenomena, with differing conditions in the State making drought many times a regional focus.

Despite all of the problems that droughts have caused, drought has proven to be difficult to define and there is no universally accepted definition because:

2. Drought is often the result of many complex factors acting and interacting within the environment. This interaction is such that drought often has no distinct start nor end, thus complicating the problem of a drought definition.

3. The impacts of drought vary by affected sector, thus making definitions of drought many times specific to particular affected groups.

While the effects of drought on the environment cannot be avoided in all cases, especially during long-term severe drought, what can and should be avoided are the adverse environmental effects due to human-induced increases in the magnitude and duration of naturally occurring droughts.

The most commonly used drought definitions are based on meteorological, agricultural hydrological and socioeconomic effects.

This type of drought is often defined by a period of substantially diminished precipitation duration and/or intensity. The commonly used definition of meteorological drought is an interval of time, generally of the order of months or years, during which the actual moisture supply at a given place consistently falls below the climatically appropriate moisture supply.

Agricultural drought occurs when there is inadequate soil moisture to meet the needs of a particular crop at a particular time. Agricultural drought usually occurs after meteorological drought but before hydrological drought and can also affect livestock and other agricultural operations.

Hydrological drought refers to deficiencies in surface and subsurface water supplies. It is measured as streamflow, snowpack, and as lake, reservoir and groundwater levels. There is usually a time lag between lack of rain or snow and less measurable water in streams, lakes and reservoirs, making hydrological measurements not the earliest indicators of drought.

Socioeconomic drought occurs when physical water shortages start to affect the health, well-being, and quality of life of the people, or when the drought starts to affect the supply and demand of an economic product.

The potential impacts of drought on the State of New Mexico are many and varied and can affect a wide range of economic, environmental and social activities. The relative vulnerability or risk exposure of these activities to the effects of drought usually depend on the types of water demands, how these demands are met, and corresponding water supplies available to meet these demands.

Those human and natural resource activities depending solely on rainfall and soil moisture, such as dryland farming, ranching, and some environmental water uses, are most at risk from drought. These activities can suffer discernible effects even with droughts of short duration.

Still at relatively high risk, but somewhat less exposed, are those water uses depending on instream flows, which includes run-of-the-river irrigation, aquatic, wetland and riparian environmental communities, and recreational water uses.

Less exposed to the risks of drought in New Mexico are many urban and agricultural water users who rely on surface water reservoir supplies or on groundwater resources that are not dependent on high rates of aquifer recharge or adversely affected by concentrated levels of high pumping.

The level of risk, which includes vulnerability and hazard, has been considered in the design of the structure of the New Mexico Drought Plan and is integrated into the planning, mitigation, and response activities of the Plan.

The following section presents the structure and function of the in-state organizations dealing with drought-related issues at the state and local level in New Mexico as depicted in Fig. 1.

The New Mexico Drought Task Force is the steering group that oversees the implementation of drought-related activities in the State of New Mexico. The Task Force consists of senior managers of the designated lead state drought response agencies consisting of the NM Department of Agriculture, the NM Department of Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources, the Office of the State Engineer, and the Office of Emergency Management. This task force acts as a liaison between the various work groups involved with drought planning and the Office of the Governor and also assumes the lead role in intergovernmental drought response coordination and media information releases.

The Monitoring Work Group is the core of the New Mexico Drought Plan and is responsible for the monitoring of all available climatological data, soil moisture readings, reservoir storage levels and other pertinent information necessary to analyze the current status level of drought conditions in the State of New Mexico. This group of water resource, agricultural and climate professionals assesses the information, makes evaluations as to the current and future status of drought in the State, advises other work groups and task force members as to the current status level of drought in the State and, as necessary, employs needed "triggers" to implement further actions by other work groups.

The Monitoring Work Group consists of technical experts from the NM Department of Agriculture, New Mexico Interstate Streams Commission, New Mexico State Climate Center, National Weather Service, USDA- Natural Resources Conservation Service, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, UDSI-Bureau of Land Management, and U.S. Geological Survey.

The Monitoring Work Group also coordinates the dissemination of vital information such as the New Mexico Water Supply Forecast, the New Mexico Basin Outlook Report, New Mexico Reservoir Storage Report, Weekly Ag Update, and drought forecast information on the NM Climate Center and U.S. Geological Survey Internet Websites.

The Impact Assessment Work Group is comprised of four specific functional sub-groups representing various sectors of possible drought assistance impact groups. The members are water resource professionals who have experience in the planning, analysis, and use of water resources in New Mexico. They have been chosen as the core of the assessment group to assess the vulnerability of their particular affected customer impact sub-groups, develop long range strategies for assisting their customers and develop mitigation and response alternatives to known and unforeseen customer problems.

The Impact Assessment Work Group monitors and assesses the current and potential impacts of impending or ongoing drought upon the State’s economy, environment and natural resources. It is the responsibility of the IAWG to initiate any and all appropriate drought responses within the capabilities of existing state and federal resources, and advise the Drought Task Force of any needs that cannot be met through existing in- state resources.

This sub-group is an assessment, mitigation and response group which collects input data from an existing network of local county Food and Agricultural Committees and other sources to identify drought impacts and track their occurrence and intensity relative to the agricultural industry. The findings and recommendations of the sub-group are assimilated into the overall drought assessment and help assure efficient response and mitigation capabilities and documentation for any emergency declaration. Individual agency programs are not subject to approval by this sub-group, which serves only to augment existing capabilities.

The membership of this group includes representatives from the New Mexico Department of Agriculture, the Office of the New Mexico State Engineer, New Mexico Interstate Streams Commission, New Mexico Cooperative Extension Service, USDA- Natural Resources Conservation Service, USDA-Farm Services Agency, USDA-Forest Service, USDI-Bureau of Land Management, USDI-Bureau of Reclamation, NM Association of Conservation Districts and other agricultural organizations.

This sub-group makes assessments and develops mitigation strategies for drought related impacts on drinking water systems, energy delivery systems, and public health conditions. These assessments are based upon the most recent data available from a network of system managers and from a prepared list of vulnerable public utility systems.

Specialists in this sub-group include representatives from the New Mexico Department of Health, New Mexico Environment Department, New Mexico Office of Emergency Management, New Mexico National Guard, New Mexico Rural Water Users Association, New Mexico Interstate Streams Commission, and the Corps of Engineers.

The role of this sub-group is to make assessments, identify major vulnerable areas of concern, and develop mitigation and response alternatives for drought impacts on wildlife and wildfire occurrence.

Participants in this sub-group include representatives from the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish, New Mexico Office of Emergency Management, New Mexico State Land Office, New Mexico Division of Forestry, USDA-Forest Service, USDA-Natural Resources Conservation Service, USDI-Bureau of Indian Affairs, USDI-Fish and Wildlife Service and USDI-Bureau of Land Management.

This sub-group monitors the effects of drought on the various economic indicators derived from data representing all sectors of the State economy, including tourism. Projections are made regarding future impacts, and recommendations for mitigation and recovery strategies are provided to other working sub- groups.

Representation on the sub-group includes participants from the New Mexico Department of Economic Development, New Mexico State Parks Division, New Mexico Department of Tourism, and the National Park Service.

Drought monitoring and the ability to predict the current and future stages of drought development are key to the New Mexico Drought Plan. To supply real-time climate, streamflow, and reservoir information for water planning professionals, a network of data gathering sites, operated by various state and federal agencies, has been established in New Mexico.

The National Weather Service collects and analyzes data from over 200 weather stations in New Mexico. These sites collect data on precipitation, temperature and/or snowfall and are integrated into various prediction indices. This data is also available in a real-time and long term record format from the New Mexico Climatic Center Website.

The Natural Resource Conservation Service operates a network of 43 snowfall measuring stations throughout New Mexico. The climate and snowpack data from these Snow Survey sites, 16 of which have been automated, is used to develop monthly streamflow forecasts for the major river basins in New Mexico and is provided the Western Regional Climate Center Internet Website at http://www.wrcc.dri.edu/snotel.html, as well as being published monthly in the New Mexico Basin Outlook Report.

The U.S. Geological Survey maintains, operates and analyzes a network of over 200 streamflow measuring stations throughout the state of New Mexico. Many of these gauging stations have been automated, thus providing real-time access to streamflow data through the USGS Website at http://wwwdnmalb.cr.usgs.gov/public/

The New Mexico Interstate Streams Commission monitors major water storage reservoirs operated by various state, federal, and private agencies in the state and provides a monthly summary of the storage status of these reservoirs.

The New Mexico Department of Agriculture maintains a statewide network for crop status and soil moisture monitoring and provides a weekly/monthly analysis of this data in both a newsletter on their Internet Website at http://www.nass.usda.gov/nm.

Various indicators and climatic indices have been developed by water resource and climitalogical professionals for use in drought planning and these indices have been integrated into the New Mexico plan as key elements examined and tracked by the Monitoring Work Group.

To use these indices, New Mexico has been divided into eight separate climatic zones, each representing a particular region of the state that has similar climatic conditions and work is underway to develop smaller subgroups for these zones. The following indices are used in each of the zones to assist in the determination of drought status.

The Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) is a "meteorological" drought index that responds to weather conditions that have been abnormally dry or abnormally wet. The PDSI is calculated based on precipitation, temperature and Available Water Content (AWC) of the soil. The Palmer Index varies from +6.0 to -6.0 with a classification scale indicating relative meteorological and hydrological development cycles. Table 1 reflects the range and extent of the PDSI classification system:

Table 1: PDSI Classification System
4.00 or more	Extremely wet
3.00 to 3.99	Very wet
2.00 to 2.99	Moderately wet
1.00 to 1.99	Slightly wet
.50 to .99	Incipient wet spell
.49 to -.49	Near normal
-.50 to -.99	Incipient dry spell
-1.00 to 1.99	Mild drought
-2.00 to -2.99	Moderate drought
-3.00 to 3.99	Severe drought
-4.00 or lower	Extreme drought

The Surface Water Supply Index (SWSI) was developed to compliment the Palmer Index. The objective of the SWSI is to incorporate both hydrological and climatological features into a single index, and is intended to be an indicator of surface water conditions where mountain snowpack is a major component.

Four inputs are required for the SWSI: snowpack, streamflow, precipitation, and reservoir storage. Because it is dependent on the season, the SWSI is computed with only snowpack, precipitation and reservoir in the winter months, with streamflow replacing snowpack in the equation during the summer months.

Like the Palmer Index, the SWSI is centered on zero and ranges from +4.2 to - 4.2, as shown in Table 2.

Table 2: Surface Water Supply Index (SWSI)
+3.0 to +4.0	Extremely wet
+2.0 to +3.0	Moderately wet
+1.0 to +2.0	Slightly wet
-1.0 to +1.0	Near average
-2.0 to -1.0	Slightly dry
-3.0 to -2.0	Moderately dry
-3.0 to -4.0	Extremely dry

The Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) is designed to quantify the precipitation deficit for multiple time scales. These time scales reflect the impact of drought on the availability of the different water resources. The SPI is calculated by taking the difference of the precipitation from the mean for a particular time scale, and then dividing by the standard deviation. A drought event is defined as any time the SPI is continuously negative and reaches an intensity where the SPI is -1.0 or lower. The drought event ends when the SPI becomes positive.

Each drought event therefore has a duration defined by its beginning and end, and an intensity for each month that the event continues, as shown by example in Table 3.

Table 3: SPI Values for recent Colorado Drought
SPI Values	Drought Category	Time in Category
0 to -.99	Mild Drought	34.1%
-1.0 to -1.49	Moderate Drought	9.2%
-1.5 to -1.99	Severe Drought	4.4%
-2.00 or less	Extreme Drought	2.3%

Table No. 3 also shows the percent of time that the SPI is in each of the drought categories based on an analysis of available station data. Because the SPI is standardized, these percentages are usually expected from a "normal distribution" of the SPI. The 2.3% of SPI values within the Extreme Drought category is a percentage that is typically expected for an extreme event. In contrast, the Palmer Index reaches its extreme category more than 10% of the time across section of the Great Plains. This standardization allows the SPI to determine the rarity of a current drought as well as the probability of the precipitation necessary to end the current drought.

Because the analysis of available drought information by the Monitoring Work Group is the basis for the determination of needed actions by other work groups, New Mexico will use an analysis of information from various indices and real-time ground truth data, including the Palmer Index, SPI and SWSI to "trigger" and indicate various stages of drought status in New Mexico, as shown in following table.

The role of drought assessment and response in New Mexico is designed to be proactive and to assist existing state, federal and local agencies carry out their designated missions for assisting drought affected customer groups.

To carry out this role, an Impact Assessment Work Group (IAWG) as described earlier in Section 5.3.1 serves as a consortium to assess and address the impacts of drought on respective target groups. These target groups are represented by the four Impact Assessment Sub-Groups :

These four Sub-Groups have analyzed vulnerable sectors of their respective impact groups and have developed numerous proactive action items that would mitigate the effects of drought on their target group. These actions include items that are to be done as a result of on-going drought and actions that are to be taken before a drought event to promote a more proactive atmosphere between affected parties. It is felt that this proactive approach will produce a more effective delivery system of mitigating the effects of drought on the population and natural resources of New Mexico.

The actions that are proposed to be carried out by the respective state, federal and local agencies emphasize the acceleration or targeting of agency resources to affected parties and encourage existing agencies to develop strong partnerships between these agencies, their customers and the general population of New Mexico. These efforts may challenge the management of many agencies to look beyond their current service or regulatory role and identify new partnerships and opportunities that will be of the greatest benefit to the State of New Mexico in minimizing the effects of drought.

These agency representatives form the nucleus of the Sub-Groups and during the time of actual drought situations serve as the main conduit for the flow of information between their respective agencies and the Sub-Group.

In addition to the principal membership, each Sub-Group is encouraged to open lines of communications with affected customer groups throughout the state to increase the flow of available data from the drought affected areas to the membership of the Sub-Group.

The response to the particular drought mitigation needs of a target Sub-Group are determined and initiated by agency representatives in each Sub-Group. These response actions have usually already been planned well in advance of the drought situation, or in the case of unforeseen situations, will be the result of intense analysis of available problem data by the Sub-Group membership. Any additional assistance needs which cannot be met by existing in-state resources are passed on to the Drought Task Force for further action.

The entire Assessment and Response effort is initiated by the "triggering" mechanisms discussed in Section 6, Drought Monitoring, of this plan and is coordinated to the various levels of drought stages as shown on Figs. 15,16.

In periods of drought, the effectiveness of the New Mexico Drought Plan hinges on the timely dissemination of clear and precise information to the public.

To accomplish this objective, the following communications guidelines have been established:

a. Initial release of any drought status or response information will originate from the Office of the Governor, with technical oversight being provided by members of the NM Drought Task Force.

b. Drought press releases from the Office of the Governor will use the existing client list to target media outlets, congressional delegations and State of NM Cabinet and Department heads.

c. Other agencies within the State of New Mexico are encouraged to redirect information obtained from the Office of the Governor to their respective client bases, however no information will be released to these clients until after the initial release by the Governor. These agency client lists should emphasize clients not already receiving information from the Office of the Governor and/or those needing drought related services available from the originating agency.

d. Drought status and response information, developed by the Task Force and Monitoring and Assessment Groups, will not be posted to any Website until the information has initially been released by the Office of the Governor.

e. The NM Drought Task Force will be responsible for the dissemination of existing Drought Public Service Announcements for the use of radio and television media in drought affected counties.

Drought Stage	Characteristics
Normal	PDSI between -.9 and + 5.0, Six month SPI positive.
Advisory (Approaching or experiencing incipient drought)	One month or 4 week running average PDSI is between -1.0 and -1.9 but period of less than -1.0 does not exceed 2 months. Six month SPI declining and less than 0.25 for 2 consecutive months.
Alert (Mild drought)	PDSI is between -1.0 and -1.9 for greater than 2 months or between -2.0 and -2.9 for 1 month. Six month SPI between 0 and -.99 .
Warning (Moderate drought)	PDSI is between -1.0 and -1.9 for 9 months or more, -2.0 to -2.9 for at least 2 months, or -3.0 or less for at least 1 month. Six month SPI declining and between -1.00 and -1.49 .
Emergency (Severe to extreme drought)	PDSI is between -2.0 to -2.9 for 9 months or more, -3.0 to -3.9 for at least 2 months, or -4.0 or less for at least 1 month. Six month SPI declining and less than -1.5 .
Emergency (Drought receding)	After severe to extreme drought criteria has been met, PDSI improves to greater than -2.0 for 2 consecutive months. Six month SPI turns in positive direction for two consecutive months.
Warning (Drought receding)	After criteria for moderate or worse drought has been met, PDSI improves to greater than -1.5 for 2 consecutive months. Six month SPI rising in positive direction and between -1.00 and -1.49 for two consecutive months.
Alert (Drought receding)	After criteria for mild or worse has been met, PDSI improves to greater than -1.0 for 2 consecutive months. Six month SPI rising in positive direction and between 0.0 and -.99 for 2 consecutive months.
Advisory (Drought receding)	After criteria for mild or worse drought has been met, PDSI improves to greater than or equal to zero, and the 10 month running total of the PDSI is less than -10.0 . Six month SPI value above zero.