Natural disasters are extreme natural events that cause widespread damage and loss of life and disrupt human activities. These disasters include earthquakes, hurricanes, typhoons, droughts, floods, volcanic eruptions, etc. Today, we’ll talk about water droughts, how you can recognize one, and their effect on average people. Let’s start!
What Is a Drought?
Drought is a prolonged dry period caused when below-normal precipitation happens. Our environment gets the water it needs from rain or snow. Soil, groundwater, and water streams can experience a lack of water because of inadequate rainfall. Drought can also damage crops, water storage, cause economic crises, and increase diseases.
How harmful a drought is depends on its duration. Droughts in a particular area can last weeks, months, and even years. Some regions often experience droughts lasting for decades. The longer it remains, the deadlier it becomes.
What Is the Cause of a Drought?
Predominantly, when you ask what the cause of drought is, the answer is insufficient precipitation. But what amount is considered insufficient? It varies from region to region. Not all parts around the globe have the same downpour, and it doesn’t stay the same yearly. However, the average amount of rainfall in a specific area remains pretty much the same. For example, the average precipitation in the southeast is less than 3 inches yearly. On the other hand, it’s over 150 inches for the northeast. Drought occurs when a region has rainfall less than expected for a certain period.
Manmade and natural causes can both trigger droughts. But human-induced activities like global warming, deforestation, bad agricultural practices, and high water usage are the most prominent reasons behind a drought.
Here’s what happens when a drought occurs:
- Stream flow reduces
- Water levels in lakes and reservoirs decline
- Water depth in wells increase
- Dry weather persists
- Shortage of water supply
What are the Effects of Drought?
A drought creates various challenging conditions for all life. And often, it creates conditions that give birth to new problems which are not directly related to the drought. Let’s find out some effects of a drought.
Here are some harmful effects of droughts:
– Crop Yield & Livestock Shortage:
Drought conditions result in a lack of natural rainfall for crops, requiring additional water for irrigation. However, accessing water from lakes, rivers, or streams becomes challenging during droughts. These sources may dry up, or their water levels may decrease, resulting in inadequate water supply for irrigation.
Drought results in low crop yields, eventually increasing food prices. Besides, people rely on livestock for food, and drought also affects their health. Often livestock becomes malnourished, sick, and dies during the drought. The low crop yield and livestock shortage can eventually create malnutrition due to an inadequate food supply.
– Clean Water Shortage:
Drought causes a shortage of clean drinking water, which can lead to the consumption of contaminated water and outbreaks of diseases like cholera and typhoid.
That’s where our inline home water filter comes in. At Aqua Ultraviolet, we offer an inline drinking water filter system that you can install in homes and offices to ensure a clean water supply during drought. This filtering system provides high-quality water from all faucets, promoting the consumption of safe and clean water and reducing the risk of water-borne diseases.
– Pollution & Health Problems:
During drought, the rivers and streams have less water, increasing pollutants, eventually leading to water stagnation. Stagnant water is the source of many outbreaks carried by insects and animals.
Drought also makes the air quality poor with dust, wildfire, dry soil, and vegetation. This dry air initiates various respiratory illnesses and many other public health issues.
Learn More with Aqua Ultraviolet
Many practices at home and outside can help you save water during drought conditions, such as avoiding unnecessary toilet flushing, taking shorter showers, stopping water wastage while shaving and brushing, limiting the use of running water, etc.
You can also try our cutting-edge solutions from Aqua Ultraviolet, a manufacturer of UV sterilizers and bio-mechanical filtration systems. Visit our website to learn more about Aqua Ultraviolet.
