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Planning for urban water conservation requires an understanding of how and where water is used in cities. There is significant evidence that urban water use is related to the characteristics of the residents, housing types, and landscaping patterns. At the same time, a growing body of research has shown geographic clustering of high or low water use at the neighborhood scale. This paper explores how the characteristics of neighborhoods influence water use at the parcel scale. We hypothesized that neighborhood characteristics influence water use through social dynamics as well as the physical structure of the neighborhood. Using a dataset for almost 75,000 parcels across 248 neighborhoods in Salt Lake City, Utah, we used multilevel modeling to determine how nine characteristics of neighborhoods influenced parcel-level water use. Almost a quarter (24%) of the variation in parcel-scale water use was explained by neighborhood characteristics. Controlling for key parcel-level drivers of water use, we determined that several neighborhood factors were significantly associated with parcel-level water use. For residential properties, parcels in more homogeneous suburban neighborhoods dominated by detached single family-owned homes and family households used more water than comparable parcels in neighborhoods with mixed housing and household types. Neighborhood effects were more pronounced for residential parcels than commercial, and more for outdoor than indoor water use. We suggest that planning and design strategies at the neighborhood level can contribute to urban water conservation.

Climate change and population growth serve as fundamental problems in assessing potential impacts on future surface water quality. In addition to uncertainties in climate depicted in various representative concentration pathway (RCP) scenarios, futuristic population growth mimicking historical conditions is subject to uncertainties related to changing development patterns. The combination of climate change and population characteristics exacerbates concerns regarding the future water quality performance of river systems. Previous studies have established linkages among future climate, population impacts and watershed water quality performance. However, these linkages have not been specifically incorporated into water quality trading programs. Rather than temporally-variant adjustment factors, WQT programs use constant margins of safety for pollutant reduction credits resulting in trade ratios that do not explicitly account for futuristic climate and population uncertainties. Hence, this study proposes a conceptual framework for water quality trading establishing adjustment factors as margins of safety on trade ratios for pollutant reduction credits examining climate and population characteristics separately followed by evaluating them combined. This new framework is demonstrated using a programming script that calculates the margins of safety based on simulation results conducted through a water quality model of the Jordan River in Salt Lake City, UT, USA over a 3-year timeframe. With margins of safety over magnitudes of ±2 over the Jordan River simulations, this research introduces the framework as a foundation for developing adjustment factors for addressing climatic and population characteristics upon river systems.

Urbanization, climate, and ecosystem change represent major challenges for managing water resources. Although water systems are complex, a need exists for a generalized representation of these systems to identify important components and linkages to guide scientific inquiry and aid water management. We developed an integrated Structure-Actor-Water framework (iSAW) to facilitate the understanding of and transitions to sustainable water systems. Our goal was to produce an interdisciplinary framework for water resources research that could address management challenges across scales (e.g., plot to region) and domains (e.g., water supply and quality, transitioning, and urban landscapes). The framework was designed to be generalizable across all human–environment systems, yet with sufficient detail and flexibility to be customized to specific cases. iSAW includes three major components: structure (natural, built, and social), actors (individual and organizational), and water (quality and quantity). Key linkages among these components include: (1) ecological/hydrologic processes, (2) ecosystem/geomorphic feedbacks, (3) planning, design, and policy, (4) perceptions, information, and experience, (5) resource access and risk, and (6) operational water use and management. We illustrate the flexibility and utility of the iSAW framework by applying it to two research and management problems: understanding urban water supply and demand in a changing climate and expanding use of green storm water infrastructure in a semi-arid environment. The applications demonstrate that a generalized conceptual model can identify important components and linkages in complex and diverse water systems and facilitate communication about those systems among researchers from diverse disciplines.