Drought A drought is a period of time where there is a lack of water. There are four different types of droughts according to Dosomething.org. They are “meteorological (lack of precipitation), agricultural (lack of moisture in soil where crops grow), hydrological (low levels of water in lake and reservoirs), and socioeconomic (water shortages in drinking and running water).” Why is this important? Why should one care about the drought? No matter if you live in California or New Jersey you are affected by California’s “Megadrought.” As you probably know both humans, plants, and animals are dependent on water. The main effects of droughts are economic and environmental issues. Economic problems caused by droughts are unemployed farmers …show more content…
A drought can cause habitat loss because there is very little precipitation to water grass. Therefore it is easier for the grass to catch fire which can spread into a nearby forest. A good example of a violent fire is the North fire. This fire started on July 17, it started with flaming vegetation that was blown on the 1-15 freeway. The fire burned “two trucks and 18 cars” but luckily no one was hurt or killed. Unfortunately the fire burned 4,250 acres. When fires like this one spreads to the forest animals are forced to migrate. They must migrate because there food has all burned. This is also how the population of some animals decrease. It happens when the group of animals have to migrate to find food but they starve on the way to the …show more content…
We can do this by allowing overgrazing, cutting down trees, and building dams. Overgrazing happens when farmers are irresponsible. If farmers have too many animals grazing in one area to the point where the animals are damaging the vegetation and the soil. The damage makes it harder for the soil to absorb water. The result is that the water sits on top of the soil and it evaporates. Another way people caused the drought is deforestation. Deforestation is the process of cutting down trees to make an area of land empty. The result of deforestation is similar to that of overgrazing. The missing vegetation damages the soil because the vegetation can not fertilize the soil any longer. The water that is used during this process gets dried up because there are no plants to store it