Combining buprenorphine with behavioral interventions is significantly more efficacious in the treatment of opioid-dependent adolescents relative to combining clonidine and behavioral interventions.

Media-related public awareness of extreme drought in California is linked to changes in urban water use behavior.

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Urban outdoor water conservation and efficiency offer high potential for demand-side management, but irrigation, greenness, and climate interlinks must be better understood to design optimal policies. To identify paired transitions during drought, we matched parcel-level water use data from smart, dedicated irrigation meters with high-spatial resolution, multispectral aerial imagery. We examined changes across 72 non-residential parcels using potable or recycled water for large landscape irrigation over four biennial summers (2010, 2012, 2014, and 2016) that encompassed a historic drought in California. We found that despite little change in irrigation levels during the first few years of the drought, parcel greenness deteriorated. Between summers 2010 and 2014, average parcel greenness decreased −61% for potable water irrigators and −56% for recycled water irrigators, providing evidence that vegetation could not reach its vigor from wetter, cooler years as the drought intensified with abnormally high temperatures. Between summers 2014-2016 as drought severity lessened, irrigation rates decreased significantly in line with high drought saliency, but greenness rebounded ubiquitously, on average +110% for potable water irrigators and +62% for recycled water irrigators, demonstrating climate-driven vegetation recovery as evaporation and plant evapotranspiration rates decreased. Transitions were similar for customers with both potable and recycled water; vegetation changes were dominated by the overarching climatic regime. As irrigation cannot always overcome drought conditions, which will become more severe under climate change, to maintain vegetation health, utilities and urban planners should consider the tradeoffs between providing green spaces and water scarcity. This includes evaluating the roles of climate-appropriate landscaping and adaptive reallocation of potable and recycled water resources to enhance water security. By addressing emerging themes in urban water management through analysis of data from forthcoming water metering and aerial imagery technologies, this research provides a unique perspective on water use, greenness, and drought linkages.

A frequent barrier to addressing some of our world’s most pressing environmental challenges is a lack of funding. Currently, environmental project funding largely comes from philanthropic and public sources, but this does not meet current needs. Increased coordination and collaboration between multiple levels and sectors of government, in addition to private sector funding, can help address the environmental funding challenge. New financial tools and strategies can enable this transition and facilitate uptake of innovative solutions. One such mechanism, the Environmental Impact Bond (EIB), is an emerging financial tool with the potential to transform the environmental funding landscape. However, these financial instruments are not well understood or recognized beyond those actively involved in EIB projects or in the field of conservation finance. As EIBs gain momentum, there is a clear need for a common framework, including definitions and nomenclature, research needs, and outlook for the future. In this paper, we define EIB mechanics, elucidate the difference between EIBs and Green Bonds, and propose a common vocabulary for the field. Drawing on first-hand experience with the few EIBs which have been deployed, we review and assess lessons learned, trends, and paths for the future. Finally, we propose a set of future targets and discuss research goals for the field to unify around. Through this work, we identify a concrete set of research gaps and objectives, providing evidence for EIBs as one important tool in the environmental finance toolbox.

The authors report on the first study to use the systematic quantitative methods of the psychometric paradigm of risk analysis to examine risk perceptions among substance abusers. Fifty opioid-dependent injection drug users (IDUs) and 50 matched, control individuals completed a series of measures to provide quantitative representations of risk perceptions about 53 risk-laden items (including activities, substances, technologies, and diseases). Results indicated that risk perceptions of IDUs and controls were highly correlated on many items; however, IDUs perceived several items, such as hepatitis, HIV, handguns, and unprotected sex, as markedly more risky. IDUs also perceived both themselves and others as having greater risk of contracting hepatitis and HIV. IDUs wanted significantly reduced regulation of drugs, including prescription drugs, heroin, valium, and barbiturates. Factor analyses conducted to understand how risk ratings related to various characteristics that have been shown to influence risk perception revealed 3 factors that account for approximately 80% of the variability in risk perception across groups: Factor 1, related to the severity of the risk; Factor 2, related to the certainty of the risk; and Factor 3, related to the immediacy of the risk. However, IDUs more strongly associated the extent to which they were personally affected by a risk item and the extent to which the risk affected fewer or more people to Factor 1, whereas control participants more strongly associated these characteristics with Factor 2. Identifying improved methodologies for evaluating the risk perceptions of IDUs may be of considerable utility in understanding their high-risk behavior.

Nonresidential irrigation is a unique and important yet understudied urban water sector. Knowing how urban irrigators use water is critical for projecting future demands, planning diverse supply portfolios, and designing conservation strategies. In this study, we developed a holistic, analytical approach to advance knowledge about the temporal and spatial dimensions of nonresidential outdoor water use, also known as large landscape irrigation. Our approach employed data from two forthcoming technologies: dedicated irrigation meters and smart meters (i.e., advanced metering infrastructure). We then applied our methodology to a case study city in the San Francisco Bay Area, California, from 2013 to 2016 during a historic, high‐profile drought. Importantly, we uncovered behavioral differences between customers with potable versus recycled water connections and different subsectors of large landscape irrigation. Overall, conservation patterns mimicked those across California. Although they saved at lower rates, customers with recycled water followed similar conservation trends despite receiving no mandates. A weekly water use model revealed drivers of water demand, while spatial analyses showed hot and cold spots of conservation, with those in higher‐income areas conserving less as the drought progressed. A conditional inference tree partitioned diverse customers based on their conservation rates, identifying characteristics of customers who could provide the most savings in future droughts. As increasing water scarcity and population growth prompt water suppliers to optimize resources through supply diversification and demand‐side management, large landscape irrigation presents one avenue for achieving those goals.

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