Environment & Ecosystem Science (EES)

Natural hazards such as agricultural droughts impact negatively on crop yields and economic activities. Characterization of agricultural droughts provides precise and accurate information for decision making processes during agricultural drought events. Planning and responding to the hazards by government, and non-governmental organizations in the Sudano-Sahelian belt has been limited in the past due to knowledge gap on the nature and impact of the hazard. This study seeks to characterize historical agricultural droughts, assess their impact on crop yields and people’s susceptibility to undernourishment and through forecasting, unravel what the future holds. Annual effective reconnaissance drought index values are computed using mean monthly potential evapotranspiration and effective precipitation data. To assess the impact of agricultural drought, the index’s values are compared to crop yields and prevalence to undernourishment data. Results show that agricultural drought events of 1983 and 2008 are mild and ephemeral while the 1999 – 2006 event is severe and protracted. While there is 26% chance of materialization of an agricultural drought in Gourma, the chance of being ephemeral and of moderate category is the highest (8%). It has been determined that an ephemeral and moderate agricultural drought would trigger below average yields for maize, sorghum and millet. Mild, moderate and severe events increase prevalence to undernourishment by 2.9 %, 4.3 % and 5.8 % respectively. From 2020 to 2030, a continued materialization of agricultural droughts is expected