CAREER: DroughtRx - forecasting drought at decision-relevant scales for agricultural resilience

Drought, which develops through complex interactions between rainfall, soil moisture, vegetation, and human water use, threatens water and food security. Yet, drought information often lacks the spatial detail needed to capture impacts at the scale of farms, ranches, and local water decisions. This project will address this gap by improving how drought is monitored and predicted using high-resolution soil moisture information. By producing more detailed and actionable drought forecasts, the project will support decisions on irrigation, planting, grazing, and drought response, while also advancing public access to drought information. The project will also strengthen education and outreach through student training, teacher engagement, new course materials, and an online dashboard that allows users to view drought forecasts and contribute local observations. Specifically, this project will develop DroughtRx, a drought monitoring and prediction framework for the United States that combines land surface modeling, satellite observations, ground measurements, and physics-informed artificial intelligence. The research will produce daily soil moisture and drought information at 30-meter resolution, evaluate how data resolution affects drought detection, and test forecasts from days to months ahead. The framework will be assessed using sensor measurements and citizen-reported drought observations, and it will be delivered through an experimental near-real-time dashboard. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.