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Tribal Drought Dashboard

A service of the Montana Climate Office

US Drought Monitor on Tribal lands

Select an area on the map, or use Find a Tribal area in the header, to see its current conditions and drought history. Reservations and off-reservation trust lands are reported separately.

Drought data: US Drought Monitor (National Drought Mitigation Center, USDA, NOAA), aggregated to US Census AIANNH boundaries by usdm-aiannh. Maps are released Thursdays, valid as of the preceding Tuesday.

US Drought Monitor

Current drought class for every Tribal area

Tribal Drought Dashboard

Native Resilience · A service of the Montana Climate Office

What this is

The US Drought Monitor (USDM) is the weekly national drought map. This dashboard reports it for every American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian area in the US Census: the share of each area in each drought class this week, and every week since January 2000.

Where Census splits an area into a reservation and off-reservation trust land, the two are reported separately — their drought conditions can differ.

Reading the numbers

  • D0 abnormally dry · D1 moderate · D2 severe · D3 extreme · D4 exceptional drought.
  • Area in drought is the share of land in D1 or worse, as on drought.gov.
  • The history chart shows the share at or above each class (D0–D4, D1–D4, …), drawn over one another, so the top of each color is that cumulative share.
  • The map shows the week’s US Drought Monitor map, in full color inside Tribal areas and faded outside them. Switch to Most severe by area to color each area by the most severe class covering any part of it — easier to scan at national scale.
  • Overlapping counties lists the counties each area lies in, with each county’s most severe class that week. USDA drought programs, such as the Livestock Forage Program and disaster designations, are triggered by county drought levels.
  • Percentages are of the whole Census boundary, including water, which the coastline-clipped USDM map counts as no drought.

Using the dashboard

  • Click an area, or find it by name in the header. Every area is reachable by keyboard.
  • The address bar always holds your current view; copy it to share.
  • Each area links to d3drought.org for the latest precipitation, evaporative demand, and drought index maps.

Data & credits

Drought: US Drought Monitor, by the National Drought Mitigation Center, USDA, and NOAA. Boundaries: US Census Bureau TIGER/Line American Indian/Alaska Native/Native Hawaiian Areas, using each year's boundaries for that year's maps (census-aiannh). County drought: usdm-counties. Aggregation and data: usdm-aiannh. Basemap © CARTO, © OpenStreetMap contributors.

Native Resilience is funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Institute of Food and Agriculture (USDA NIFA). Dashboard by the Montana Climate Office. This dashboard is not an official USDA or NOAA product.