How Effectively do Drought Indices Capture Health Outcomes? An Investigation from Rural Australia

Abstract:

Drought is a global threat to public health. Increasingly, the impact of drought on mental health and wellbeing is being recognised. This research investigates the relationship between drought and wellbeing to determine which drought indices most effectively capture wellbeing outcomes and how they might inform more appropriate and timely responses. A thorough understanding of the relationship between drought and wellbeing must consider: (i) the three aspects of drought (duration, frequency and magnitude); (ii) the different types of drought (e.g. meteorological, agricultural, hydrological, etc.); and (iii) the individual context of specific industries and communities (e.g. economic and social capital, amenity, history of adversity etc.). To improve this understanding, we used a variety of drought types, drought indices, and time windows (i.e. the number of months used to calculate the drought index value) to identify the thresholds for dry (and wet) epochs that exacerbate (and buffer) impacts on wellbeing. Four case study regions in southeast Australia are used to highlight the spatial variability in the drought-wellbeing relationship. The results demonstrate that the relationship between drought indices and wellbeing outcomes differs temporally, spatially and according to drought type. For governments and policy makers to implement effective financial support and other adaptation options it is essential to choose critically which drought index, time window and wellbeing outcome to use in empirical studies. It must be recognised that conclusions about which drought/wellbeing management strategies are optimal will differ based on these choices.