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Droughts: Types of Impacts
Drought has long since put rural communities under a difficult situation. There are plenty of drought impacts which are classified by the ‘social’, ‘economic’ and ‘environmental’ categories.

Social Impacts
An abundance of people choose rural lifestyle over a city landscape and prefer to live closer to the countryside due to cheaper costs in housing. However, this resulted in the community to be more susceptible to droughts. For example, Central Australia’s dry climate along with the dry environment affects the normal routine of people as droughts can happen any moment in accordance to the harsh and dry climate. Both long-term and short-term droughts have taken a toll on the people’s mental and physical health through obvious signs of health problems related to dust, low water flows and poor water quality, and other health issues that can cause serious bodily harm, and in the worst scenario, loss of human life.

Economic Impacts
Economic impacts can occur to anyone living in or nearby the drought zone. They can cost people their wealth and could range from anywhere between a minor effect to a major one. Income loss is a problem for farmers and could cause a ripple effect in their employment (as there is nothing for them to do other than weed the wilted crops out which would bring in no revenue.) This could lead to unemployment and a gradual drop in tax revenue for local, state and federal governments. Drought affects normal people as prices for food increase and supplies decrease, and until it disappears the social, economic and environmental problems will persist.

Environmental Impacts
Without water, both flora and fauna cannot survive; water is required to perform a wide variety of everyday tasks. When a drought occurs, normal life will be disturbed. If a drought is short-termed, the damage caused in the environment could be reverted as life goes back to normal. However, if it happens to last a long time, the environment will face a long time of recovery. A farmer’s block of land could be rendered useless by the droughts due to crops’ inability to grow without water and poor soil quality. As the ground dries up, shrubs become more parched and chances of catching fire and spreading it increased dramatically. Bushfires have a higher chance of occurring right after a drought as the environment has not yet recovered from its downfall. Normal routines cannot go back to normal unless there is water.