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Ecological droughts are deficits in soil–water availability that induce threshold-like ecosystem responses, such as causing altered or degraded plant-community conditions, which can be exceedingly difficult to reverse. However,'ecological drought'can be difficult to define, let alone to quantify, especially at spatial and temporal scales relevant to land managers. This is despite a growing need to integrate drought-related factors into management decisions as climate changes result in precipitation instability in many semi-arid ecosystems. We asked whether success in restoration seedings of the foundational species big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata) was related to estimated water deficit, using the SoilWat2 model and data from> 600 plots located in previously burned areas in the western United States. Water deficit was characterized by:(1) the standardized precipitation-evapotranspiration index (SPEI), a coarse …