Talk:Megadrought

potential resources
From Talk:Southwestern United States ... and from Talk:Dust Bowl ... Jayne Belnap is a Research Ecologist at the U.S. Geological Survey with a research focus of the biological crusts that hold in place desert dust and their ecological impact on human activities. Excerpt “We just need to start putting dust into the equation.”
 * The Coming Mega Drought; The southwestern U.S. looks a lot like Australia before its nine-year dry spell by Peter H. Gleick and Matthew Heberger Scientific American January 5, 2012 (page 14 in-print).
 * Dust Up; Biologist Jayne Belnap warns of the consequences for the American West if we don't preserve a home for the minute organisms that live in desert topsoil by Brendan Borrell Scientific American January 5, 2012 (page 80 to 83, January 2012 issue)

Also of potential interest: Human impact on the environment 99.181.147.68 (talk) 04:26, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Threat to civilization
I removed this dubious and unreferenced claim from the article:
 * As such they constitute one of the greatest threats to human civilization.

At least in modern developed countries, the general response to running out of fresh water is to build desalination plants. This increases water costs, but these are a very small part of the economy; long-term droughts do not lead to civilizational collapse. Certainly they can contribute to instability in developing countries. -- Beland (talk) 18:14, 30 March 2014 (UTC)