Community Resilience to Drought Hazard in the South-Central United States
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abstract
2018 by American Association of Geographers. Drought is a hazard that inflicts costly damage to agricultural, hydrologic, and ecological systems and affects human health and prosperity. A comprehensive assessment of resilience to the drought hazard in various communities and an identification of the main variables that affect resilience is crucial to coping with the hazard and promoting resilience. This study assessed the community resilience to drought hazards of all 503 counties of Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas using the resilience inference measurement (RIM) model for the period of 2000 to 2015. Through k-means cluster analysis, stepwise discriminant analysis (74.7 percent accuracy, 72.8 percent leave-one-out cross-validation accuracy), and regression analysis (adjusted R 2 = 0.69), four variables (significant at p < 0.05) representing the social, economic, agriculture, and health sectors were identified as the main resilience indicators. Higher resilience counties were found in central Oklahoma and eastern Texas, with the few highest counties located near large metropolitan areas such as Dallas, Houston, Austin, and Albuquerque. Lower resilience counties were concentrated in western Texas. The study provides useful insights into the relationship between drought incidence, inflicted damage, and community resilience.
