Nature World: Dwindling snowmelt runoff, combined with social and economic factors favoring modernism over tradition, has lead to the decline of communal irrigation systems known as acequias that have sustained farming villages in the arid southerwestern US for centuries, according to a Dartmouth College study.
The study, which appears in the journal of Global Environmental Change, reflects similar changes seen around the world in which isolated communities become integrated into a larger economy. This integration…