UK drought is a ‘hidden’ pervasive risk, defined and perceived in different ways by diverse stakeholders and sectors. Scientists and water managers distinguish meteorological, agricultural, hydrological, and socio-economic drought. Historically triggers in drought risk management have been demarcated solely in specialist hydrological science terms using indices and critical thresholds. This paper explores ‘drought thresholds’ as a bridging concept for interdisciplinary science-narrative enquiry. The Eden catchment, Scotland acts as an exemplar, in a maritime country perceived as wet. The research forms part of creative experimentation in science-narrative methods played out in seven UK case-study catchments on hydro-meteorological gradients in the Drought Risk and You (DRY) project, with the agricultural Eden the most northerly. DRY explored how science and stories might be brought together to support better decision-making in UK drought risk management. This involved comparing specialist catchment-scale modelling of drought risk, and with evidence gathered from local narratives of drought perceptions/experiences. We develop the concept of thresholds to include perceptual triggers of drought awareness and impact within and between various sectors in the catchment (agriculture, business, health and wellbeing, public/communities, and natural and built environments). This process involved developing a framework for science-narrative drought ‘threshold thinking’ that utilises consideration of severity and scale, spatial and temporal aspects, framing in terms of enhancing or reducing factors internal and external to the catchment and new graphical methods. The paper discusses how this extended sense of thresholds might contribute to research and practice, involving different ways of linking drought severity and perception. This has potential to improve assessment of sectoral vulnerabilities, development of adaptive strategies of different stakeholders, and more tailored drought communication and messaging. Our findings indicate that drought risk presents many complexities within the catchment, given its cross-sectoral nature, rich sources of available water, variable prior drought experience among stakeholders, and different quantitative and perceptual impact thresholds across and within sectors. Fuzziness in identification of drought thresholds was multi-faceted for varied reasons. Results suggest that a management paradigm that integrates both traditional and non-traditional ‘fuzzy’ threshold concepts across sectors should be integrated into current and future policy frameworks for drought risk management.

中文翻译：

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苏格兰海上伊甸园流域“干旱阈值”的科学叙事探索：对当地干旱风险管理的启示

英国干旱是“隐性”的普遍风险，由不同的利益相关者和部门以不同的方式定义和感知。科学家和水资源管理者将气象干旱，农业干旱，水文干旱和社会经济干旱区分开来。从历史上讲，干旱风险管理的触发因素仅使用指数和临界阈值以专门的水文科学术语来划分。本文探讨了“干旱阈值”作为跨学科科学叙事研究的桥梁概念。苏格兰的伊甸园集水区是一个被认为是潮湿的海洋国家的典范。该研究是科学叙事方法创新实验的一部分，该实验在英国“干旱风险与干旱”（DRY）项目的七个英国水文气象梯度案例研究流域中进行，其中农业伊甸园向北。DRY探索了如何将科学和故事整合在一起，以支持英国干旱风险管理中更好的决策制定。这涉及比较专家集水区规模的干旱风险模型，并与从当地关于干旱感知/经验的叙述中收集的证据进行比较。我们开发了阈值的概念，以包括流域内各个部门（农业，商业，健康与福祉，公共/社区以及自然和建筑环境）内部和之间的干旱意识和影响的感知触发因素。该过程涉及开发科学叙述性干旱“阈值思维”框架，该框架利用对严重性和规模，空间和时间方面的考虑，以增强或减少集水区内部和外部的因素为框架，并采用新的图形方法。本文讨论了这种扩展的阈值意识如何有助于研究和实践，涉及将干旱严重程度与感知联系起来的不同方式。这有可能改善对部门脆弱性的评估，制定不同利益相关者的适应性战略，以及更量身定制的干旱交流和信息传递。我们的发现表明，由于干旱的跨部门性质，丰富的可用水源，利益相关者之间先前的干旱经验以及跨部门和部门内不同的定量和感知影响阈值，干旱风险在流域内带来许多复杂性。由于各种原因，在确定干旱阈值方面的模糊性是多方面的。