- Kirsten Vinyeta - Principal Investigator
- Sarah Woodbury - Graduate Student
- Masoumeh Hashemi - Graduate Student
Utah, the second most arid state in the United States only after Nevada, reported the highest per capita water use in the nation in 2015, averaging 220 gallons per capita per day (GPCD), compared to the reported national average of 77 GPCD. According to the Utah Department of Natural Resources, the primary reason Utah’s GPCD is so high is due to heavy irrigation of residential lawns; notably, these calculations don’t factor in the unmetered residential use of local canal water. This heavy and ill-defined upstream use depletes water that would otherwise travel downstream to Great Salt Lake, thereby mitigating the lake's desiccation.
In May 2023, the Utah Water Resources Division rolled out the nation’s first Landscape Conversion Incentive Program (LCIP) to motivate residential property owners, businesses, and institutions to replace lawns with more water-efficient landscapes.
To examine the LCIP, its potential benefits, and barriers to widespread implementation, our mixed-methods study combines 1) qualitative interviews and site visits with Cache Valley residents who have replaced their lawns and 2) Landscape Water Meter Modeling (LWM). Via our qualitative interviews, we are documenting what motivates residents to convert their lawn, what species or materials they are replacing their lawn with, the barriers they face in the process, and the benefits they perceive after landscape conversion is complete. Via our LWM, we are calculating the potential water savings of various lawn conversion scenarios in Cache Valley. This research has two ultimate aims, one practical and one theoretical: 1) to provide useful data to the Utah Division of Water Resources regarding avenues for maximizing the LCIP's effectiveness, and 2) to document the multispecies justice dimensions of landscape conversion.