ecent droughts in both developing and developed countries and the resulting economic and environmental impacts and personal hardships have underscored the vulnerability of all societies to this "natural" hazard. Although there are several defi nitions for drought, they almost always refer to a defi ciency of precipitation over an extended period of time, usually a season or more. This defi ciency results in a water shortage for some activity, group, or environmental sector. The National Drought Mitigation Center defi nes four kinds of drought: meteorological, agricultural, hydrologic, and socioeconomic. 1 In this paper we focus on the precipitation and forageloss aspects of drought on California's annual rangelands. The goal of this paper is to propose changes to the Noninsured Crop Disaster Assistance Program (NAP), administered by USDA Farm Services Agency (FSA), that would make it more compatible with USDA conservation programs. We begin by discussing the characteristics of drought in California, and then consider the NAP and its application to California conditions.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.