Tag: Irrigation

Geocharts: Water Challenges Around the World

by | 2.28.2013 at 11:28am
geocharts

View four interactive maps that give an overview of some of the water challenges different parts of the world currently face.

Daniel Hillel, Originator of High-Efficiency Irrigation, to Receive World Food Prize

by | 6.12.2012 at 12:32pm | 3 Comments
Hillel_black_white_portrait

Daniel Hillel, an adjunct senior scientist at Columbia University’s Earth Institute, has been awarded the World Food Prize for his work in conceiving and promoting water-saving methods that have increased crop production on arid lands in 30 countries.

The Middle East Dries Up—Another Case Study in the Water-Energy-Food Nexus

by | 4.26.2011 at 1:05pm | 8 Comments
Wheat harvest in Saudi Arabia. Source: Treehugger.

As seductive as it is, depleting non-renewable aquifers to grow food is fundamentally unsustainable for the long term, as Saudi Arabia and other nations are finding out. According to a recent article by Lester Brown, in the 1970s the world’s largest oil producer realized it could use oil-drilling technology to tap deep underwater aquifers and—amazingly, [...]

Water Sensors – Saving Water in Irrigation

by | 5.26.2009 at 11:23am

One of the largest uses of fresh water withdrawals in the United States is for irrigation. The USGS estimates that 60% of the worlds fresh water withdrawals is for irrigation purposes, which calculates to 137,000 million gallons per day used for irrigation purposes.  Some of this water is for irrigation of crops, while other of [...]

Low-cost water management in Ethiopia

by | 2.2.2009 at 11:34am | 1 Comment

Water capture and storage for irrigation has been an ongoing theme of research in Columbia’s earth and environmental engineering department, but Professor Upmanu Lall has recently taken things a step further. With funding from the Pulitzer family, Lall challenged a group of students in his senior engineering course to design a low-cost system of water [...]