News

By Emily Case-Buskirk, NDMC Communications Specialist

Researchers from the National Drought Mitigation Center (NDMC) and Mendel University in Brno have worked together for over 25 years. It’s a productive collaboration that has benefited, informed and inspired both groups.  

The partnership started in 2001, when Mirek Trnka approached Mark Svoboda, staff climatologist at the time and now the director of the NDMC, about the Standardized Precipitation Index. Trnka is a professor at Mendel University in Brno and the leader of Climate Analysis and Climate Modelling Domain at CzechGlobe Research Institute.  

“It really had to do with the NDMC’s leadership in drought monitoring and promoting indicators like the SPI,” said Mike Hayes, NDMC affiliated faculty. Hayes has been involved with the NDMC since its inception in 1995, and served as the NDMC director from August 2007 through September 2016. 

Trnka invited Svoboda, plus then-NDMC Director Don Wilhite and Hayes, to the Czech Republic to work more with Mendel University collaborators. Not long after that initial meeting, NDMC invited Mendel University researchers to visit Nebraska to continue discussing drought monitoring and planning projects. These back-and-forth visits have continued over the years.  

One project that has come to fruition during this time is Intersucho (Interdrought). Intersucho launched in 2012 as a result of the collaborative efforts of climate and drought experts in the Czech Republic, Europe and the U.S. Intersucho led to Czech Globe, a research institution that focuses on the causes and impacts of climate change. 

Hosting exchange students has also been a part of the partnership. Most recently, Monika Hlavsová, a spatial analyst and Ph.D. candidate at Mendel University, visited NDMC from Nov. 25 through Dec. 6, 2024. Her research area is drought impacts. 

While she joined her current team as a data analyst, she got more involved with drought research based on a lifelong interest in climate sciences. 

“As I became more involved with the applied outcomes of drought research, I found the work both meaningful and rewarding,” she said. “Interacting with local stakeholders and seeing how scientific results can directly support decision-making were key motivations that drew me into drought research, especially in understanding drought impacts.” 

Hlavsová’s team works to more effectively archive and collect drought impacts in the Czech Republic. She is part of one of the four research groups that Trnka oversees. Another goal of Trnka’s work is global monitoring, which has culminated in their most recent effort, TerraDrought. 

Working on a global drought portal

This September, members of the NDMC traveled to the Czech Republic to discuss TerraDrought, a global portal for drought indicators that will also incorporate drought impacts. The meeting had a strong focus on drought impacts. 

Kelly Smith, NDMC assistant director and drought impacts researcher, attended, along with Svoboda and Hayes, Chris Poulsen, GIS manager, and Beichen Zhang, NDMC Ph.D. graduate, whose work included drought impacts and machine learning. The developers of the European Drought Impact Database and others doing similar work from different countries were also there. 

“Measuring physical drought doesn’t give us the full picture of how people and ecosystems are being affected,” Smith said. “That’s where the impacts come in.” 

The project involves using multiple indicators to monitor droughts on a global scale, using open-source software and natural language processing to extract drought impacts from news articles, and connecting the dots between drought impacts and indicators. It is the first global effort of its kind, especially because of its prominent focus on drought impacts. 

“The novelty of this work with our teams is to bring together on a global scale the impacts and the indicators—kind of a one-stop shop,” Svoboda said. 

The NDMC has similar tools for the U.S., including the Drought Impact Reporter and the Drought Impacts Toolkit. Several of the research groups represented at the September meeting were experimenting with using natural language processing for various aspects of extracting and labeling drought impacts, and it was very helpful to compare methods.   

“We had very interesting conversations around comparing pros and cons of different methods,” Svoboda said. “It also gave us all a chance to exchange ideas and step back and talk about where we see this line of research going.” 

One theme Smith said was common among several researchers is AI’s demand for data that has been categorized by humans. “We keep wanting AI to do this work for us, but it really needs to follow in human footsteps,” she said. 

Learning in tandem

The NDMC developed and published products that served as an example for Mendel University to model their resources on, such as Intersucho. Both CzechGlobe and the developers of the European Drought Impacts Database took an approach first pioneered by the NDMC’s Drought Impact Reporter, collecting impacts documented in media and elsewhere, Smith said.  

“In the exchanges that have taken place, a lot of dialogue has been shared and lessons learned from one another,” Hayes said. “That’s been really collaborative and positive from both groups.” 

One example of how both groups have influenced each other is that Mendel University researchers’ way of interacting with producers is similar to NDMC’s approach to collecting drought condition monitoring reports, Hayes said. 

“I don’t know if they necessarily got that from us, or we got it from them,” he said. “They kind of developed in tandem based on conversations.” 

Hlavsová appreciates the opportunity for professional growth that it has provided for her, and the encouragement from addressing the overarching issue of drought together. 

“I believe that building international partnerships like the one with NDMC is essential for addressing complex challenges such as drought,” she said. “Despite working in a field that often deals with challenging and discouraging topics, collaboration and shared motivation among colleagues make it deeply fulfilling.” 

One thing that has kept the partnership going for so many years is the deep historical connection between Nebraska and the Czech Republic, Hayes said.  

Many settlers in Nebraska were Czech. These roots are apparent in the Wilber community’s annual Czech Festival and the Little Bohemia neighborhood in Omaha. 

This connection extends to Svoboda’s ancestry. It’s one of the fortuitous sparks that lit the way for this lasting partnership, kept aloft by productive conversations and projects. 

“We’ve always just been mutually interested in working together,” Svoboda said. “(Trnka) leveraged funding and so did we to keep that dialogue open. That led to the most recent effort.” 

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Learn more about the latest collaborative project on the TerraDrought website.