Stressors and Strategies for Managing Urban Water Scarcity: Perspectives from the Field

Water

Vivek Shandas³  Rosa Lehman³  Kelli L. Larson¹  Jeremy Bunn⁴  Heejun Chang² 

[1] Schools of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning and Sustainability, Arizona State University, AZ 85287-5302, USA;Department of Geography, Portland State University, Portland, OR 97201-0751, USA;Toulan School of Urban Studies and Planning, Portland State University, Portland, OR 97201-0751, USA;Herrera Inc., Seattle, WA 98121, USA;

关键词: water managers;    land-use planners;    climate change;    stressors;    strategies;    Portland;    phoenix;   

DOI  :  10.3390/w7126659

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

Largely because water resource planning in the U.S. has been separated from land-use planning, opportunities for explicitly linking planning policies to water availability remain unexamined. The pressing need for better coordination between land-use planning and water management is amplified by changes in the global climate, which will place even greater importance on managing water supplies and demands than in the past. By surveying land and water managers in two urbanizing regions of the western United States—Portland, Oregon and Phoenix Arizona—we assessed the extent to which their perspectives regarding municipal water resource management align or differ. We specifically focus on characterizing how they perceive water scarcity problems (i.e., stressors) and solutions (i.e., strategies). Overall, the results show a general agreement across both regions and professions that long-term drought, population growth, and outdoor water use are the most important stressors to urban water systems. The results of the survey indicated more agreement across cities than across professions with regard to effective strategies, reinforcing the idea that land-use planners and water managers remain divided in their conception of the solutions to urban water management. To conclude, we recommend potential pathways for coordinating the fields of land and water management for urban sustainability.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2015 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.