irrigation

(Newser) - Even when ISIS militants can't maintain control of Iraq's cities and villages, they have another weapon at their disposal: water. The insurgents are increasingly cutting off water to villagers, extorting local governments, and flooding homes, schools, and farms in an effort to gain the upper hand by usurping...

(Newser) - Think drive-thru cheeseburgers are cheap? Think again. What may be light on the wallet is heavy on the planet, according to a new study on the environmental costs per calorie of beef, pork, poultry, dairy, and eggs—which, combined, make up 96% of the calories Americans get via animal sources....

(Newser) - It's another kind of liquid gold: Technology typically used to find oil has instead led scientists to massive lakes, or aquifers, hundreds of feet beneath some of Kenya's driest land. UNESCO yesterday announced that five aquifers were identified and two have thus far been verified in the Turkana...

(Newser) - Author William T. Vollmann is an odd bird—“a loner, a bit of a recluse,” Charles McGrath writes in the New York Times, “and a throwback: a wandering, try-anything writer-journalist in the tradition of Steinbeck or Jack London.” And his new book, Imperial, about Southern California,...