Reference · built on requestCommons signalAir, water & environment

U.S. Drought Monitor Data Services

Weekly drought category area, population, and DSCI statistics by state, county, or HUC from the U.S. Drought Monitor.

Request accessPricing ↗

About

The U.S. Drought Monitor is a weekly map of where drought is and how bad it is across the United States and its territories, produced jointly by the National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, USDA, and NOAA. Its data services turn each week's map into statistics by state, county, hydrologic unit, climate division, and other boundaries: area and population in categories D0 to D4, and the Drought Severity and Coverage Index.

An operator on Fibric reads the boundaries you sell into or operate in and proposes an outlook or plan change when a category or index crosses your trigger. You approve it, and the record carries the mapDate and boundary it was based on.

This is a reference listing. It documents what Fibric would read from U.S. Drought Monitor Data Services and what it could propose, based on the publisher's published interfaces. Fibric builds it under a managed deployment when you request it; selecting it here installs nothing.

Inputs

  • Percent of area in each category, none and D0 to D4, from GetDroughtSeverityStatisticsByAreaPercent for an aoi and date range
  • Area and population totals and percents from GetDroughtSeverityStatisticsByArea, ByPopulation, and ByPopulationPercent
  • The Drought Severity and Coverage Index by week from GetDSCI
  • Boundaries including USStatistics, StateStatistics, CountyStatistics, HUCStatistics, ClimateDivisionStatistics, TribalStatistics, and UrbanAreaStatistics
  • Weeks in drought by county from GetConsecutiveWeeksCounty and GetNonConsecutiveStatisticsCounty with a minimumweeks threshold
  • Threshold queries by drought level dx with DxLevelThresholdFrom and DxLevelThresholdTo
  • Weekly map geometry as shapefiles, KMZ, GML, GeoJSON, and WMS from the GIS data page

Proposed actions

Read-only. This feed informs operators; it changes nothing.

Proposed actions are target capabilities. Every action runs propose-first and needs a validated deployment and the appropriate permissions.

What you can build

  • Move the season build with the drought map

    Read county DSCI each Thursday for the counties you sell into. When the index climbs past your trigger, the operator proposes a change to the season build for the lines drought affects.

    With Season Build

  • Add drought share to the weekly review

    Read percent of area by category for your states. The review shows the D0 to D4 shares, the change from last week, and the mapDate it used.

    With Weekly Review

  • Revise demand for a region in prolonged drought

    Read consecutive weeks in drought for the counties a site serves. When a county passes your minimum, the operator proposes an outlook revision for you to approve.

    With Demand Outlook

Requirements

  • An aoi per query: a state abbreviation or FIPS code, a county FIPS code, or a HUC with hucLevel 2, 4, 6, or 8
  • Dates as M/D/YYYY in startdate and enddate, and statisticsType 1 for traditional or 2 for categorical
  • The credit line NDMC asks for wherever the map or data is reproduced
Authentication
No key. The web service at usdmdataservices.unl.edu answers anonymous requests; set an Accept header to choose the format.

Limits

  • One release a week; each map is a snapshot of conditions through Tuesday morning, not a forecast
  • Web service statistics are aggregates by boundary; use the weekly shapefile or GeoJSON to test a single point
  • aoi codes differ by area type: state abbreviations or FIPS for states, five-digit FIPS for counties, hucLevel for HUCs
  • No rate limit or service level is published for usdmdataservices.unl.edu

Access and pricing

Reference listing. Public feed access is separate from Fibric integration. If you request this feed, your quote covers the build, usage, and support.

Request U.S. Drought Monitor Data Services ↗

Questions and answers

When does new data arrive?
Every Thursday. Each map reflects conditions through the previous Tuesday morning. In the response, validStart and validEnd mark the week each mapDate covers.
What is the DSCI?
The Drought Severity and Coverage Index, an experimental single number from 0 to 500 for an area, computed as 1(D0) + 2(D1) + 3(D2) + 4(D3) + 5(D4) from categorical percent-area values. GetDSCI returns it by week.
How do you get JSON instead of CSV?
Send an Accept header of application/json or text/json. CSV is the default output; application/xml and text/xml are also accepted.
Ask about U.S. Drought Monitor Data Services

Ask about the capabilities and requirements in this listing.

For project-specific requirements, contact Fibric.

This Commons signal listing is developed, published, and supported by Fibric. It reads public data published by National Drought Mitigation Center, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, with USDA and NOAA (droughtmonitor.unl.edu, usdmdataservices.unl.edu). Upstream agencies and projects are the property of their respective owners, who are not affiliated with Fibric and do not sponsor or endorse this listing. Trademark policy