ABSTRACT
Drought impacts are non-structural and spread over a larger geographical area than damages that result from other natural hazards. While drought is usually associated with distinctive patterns of weather and may be associated with distinctive climatic regions of the world, its impacts reach beyond the short-term time periods of the weather and the spatial boundaries of the current climatic types. The economic effects of drought would include loss of livelihood from crop failures, livestock deaths, cessation of river navigation, property damage from wildfires, reduced hydro-electricity generation, loss of tax revenues to government, and the opportunity costs of drought relief aid diverted from other public funding activities. The creation of the fuel load, as the professional fire-fighters term it, is the combined result of the desiccation of the surface vegetation, the accumulation of that dead plant material and the removal of natural barriers to fire spread.
