The Drought Severity Evaluation Tool: A collaboration of Sovereignty and Science for the Navajo Nation

Abstract:

In the United States (U.S.), there are currently 574 federally recognized Native American sovereigns. As sovereign nations, tribes have self-governing rights, of which water management is fundamental. The Navajo Nation (N.N.) is the largest federally recognized reservation; its land base is larger than West Virginia. Though larger in size than West Virginia, the N.N. has limited personnel and resources available for water management. Across the over 27,000 mi², the Navajo Nation Department of Water Resources (N.N. DWR) and other tribal entities have relied on regional drought indices such as the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) and a system of climate, precipitation, and streamflow data. Regional scale data does not accurately portray the climatic conditions of the N.N. because of the lack of detail for measurements and conditions. Therefore, this project, as part of NASA’s Western Water Applications Office, has co-developed a tool with the Desert Research Institute (DRI) and N.N. DWR to assist in drought reporting that is specific to the N.N. reservation lands. The Drought Severity Evaluation Tool (DSET) has been developed to compare remotely sensed, modeled, and N.N. ground-based precipitation data in a user-friendly webtool. A detailed interactive user guide has been developed for DSET to ensure the data can be understood and used in decision making. The DSET will be a long-lasting resource for maps and time series of climate variables and drought indices at a meaningful spatial scale for water management. Due to the co-developed nature of DSET with the inclusion of tribal water management perspectives, it addresses the issue of the limited readily available meaningful data backed by already existing N.N. DWR ground-based data. The innovative nature of DSET is ground breaking in acknowledging that co-developing the tool addresses how the data can be used in decision making, where science was needed, and benefited from the supportive collaboration between the N.N. and researchers.