剑桥雅思13Test4阅读passage2

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14^26, which are based on Reading Passage 2 below. 

SAVING THE SOIL

拯救我们的土壤

More than a third of the Earth's top layer is at risk. Is there hope for our planet’s most precious resource?

超过三分之一地表土坡正处于危险之中。我们星球最宝贵的资源是否还有希望恢复?

A More than a third of the world’s soil is endangered, according to a recent UN report. If we don’t slow the decline, all farmable soil could be gone in 60 years. Since soil grows 95% of our food, and sustains human life in other more surprising ways, that is a huge problem.

A根据最近的联合国报告显示,世界上超过三分之一的土壤面临威胁。如果我们不减缓这种衰退的趋势,60年后所有可耕种的土壤都会消失。因为土壤中生长出了人类95%的粮食,并且还通过其他种种令人意想不到的方式维持着人类的生活,因此这的确是一个严峻的问题。

B Peter Groffman, from the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in New York, points out that soil scientists have been warning about the degradation of the world's soil for decades. At the same time, our understanding of its importance to humans has grown. A single gram of healthy soil might contain 100 million bacteria, as well as other microorganisms such as viruses and fungi, living amid decomposing plants and various minerals.

That means soils do not just grow our food, but are the source of nearly all our existing antibiotics, and could be our best hope in the fight against antibioticresistant bacteria. Soil is also an ally against climate change: as microorganisms within soil digest dead animals and plants, they lock in their carbon content, holding three times the amount of carbon as does the entire atmosphere. Soils also store water, preventing flood damage: in the UK, damage to buildings, roads and bridges from floods caused by soil degradation costs £233 million every year.

B来自纽约卡里生态系统研究所的 Peter groffman指出,数十年来,土壤科学家一直在警告人们土壤退化的问题。与此同时,我们也越来越认识到土壤的重要性。每克健康的土壤除了含有一些微生物如病毒和真菌外,还可能含有1亿个细菌,它们以分解植物和各种矿物质为生。

这意味着土壤不仅可以长出我们的粮食,而且是我们几乎全部抗生素的来源,还可能寄托着我们战胜耐抗生素细菌的希望。土壤也可以帮助我们抵御气候变化:随着土壤中的徽生物分解死亡的动植物,它们会固定住其中的碳性物质,其含量是大气层中碳含量的3倍。土壤也可以保持水分,抵御洪水侵袭:在英国,每年因为土壤退化导致的洪水泛滥会淹没房屋、街道和桥梁,损失高达2.33亿英镑。

C If the soil loses its ability to perform these functions, the human race could be in big trouble. The danger is not that the soil will disappear completely, but that the microorganisms that give it its special properties will be lost. And once this has happened, it may take the soil thousands of years to recover.

Agriculture is by far the biggest problem. In the wild, when plants grow they remove nutrients from the soil, but then when the plants die and decay these nutrients are returned directly to the soil. Humans tend not to return unused parts of harvested crops directly to the soil to enrich it, meaning that the soil gradually becomes less fertile. In the past we developed strategies to get around the problem, such as regularly varying the types of crops grown, or leaving fields uncultivated for a season.

C假如土壤失去了这些作用,就会对人类的生存造成巨大的威胁。这个危险并非指土壤的完全消失,而是土壤中的微生物会丧失这些特殊的作用。土壤一旦被破坏可能需要数千年的时间来恢复。

到目前为止,农业生产是的致因。在野外,植物生长时从土壤中获取养分,当植物枯死腐化以后,其中的养分又回到了土壤中。人类通常不会把作物的无用部分返还到土壤中增肥,这就意味着土壤会逐渐失去肥力。过去,我们会米取一些方法绕过这个问题,比如通过定期种植不同的农作物,或者采取休耕的方式。

D But these practices became inconvenient as populations grew and agriculture had to be run on more commercial lines. A solution came in the early 20th century with the Haber-Bosch process for manufacturing ammonium nitrate. Farmers have been putting this synthetic fertiliser on their fields ever since.

But over the past few decades, it has become clear this wasn't such a bright idea. Chemical fertilisers can release polluting nitrous oxide into the atmosphere and excess is often washed away with the rain, releasing nitrogen into rivers. More recently, we have found that indiscriminate use of fertilisers hurts the soil itself, turning it acidic and salty, and degrading the soil they are supposed to nourish.

D但随着人口的增长和农业逐渐变得商业化,这些做法越来越不可行了。直到20世纪早期,出现了一种新的解决方案——用哈伯-博斯制氨法( Haber-Bosch process制造氨硝酸。从那以后,农民们就在田地里施加这种合成肥料。

但是在过去的几十年间,我们发现这个方法并不明智,因为化肥会释放出氧化亚氪污染大气,而且多余肥料被雨水冲走,向河流中释放氮。最近我们发现化肥滥用会破坏土壤本身,使它呈酸性或碱性,使本该变得肥沃的土壤进一步退化。

E One of the people looking for a solution to this problem is Pius Floris, who started out running a tree-care business in the Netherlands, and now advises some of the world’s top soil scientists. He came to realise that the best way to ensure his trees flourished was to take care of the soil, and has developed a cocktail of beneficial bacteria, fungi and humus* to do this. Researchers at the University of Valladolid in Spain recently used this cocktail on soils destroyed by years of fertiliser overuse. When they applied Floris’s mix to the desert-like test plots, a good crop of plants emerged that were not just healthy at the surface, but had roots strong enough to pierce dirt as hard as rock. The few plants that grew in the control plots, fed with traditional fertilisers, were small and weak.

E有一个试图解决问题的人叫 Pius floris,他起初在荷兰经营树木护理业务,现在给数位的土壤科学家提供咨询。他开始意识到使树木繁茂的一个重要条件是保护土壤,为了达成这个目标,他还开发了一种混杂有益细菌、真菌和腐殖质的物质。西班牙巴利亚多利德大学的研究者们最近把这种混合物施在了遭受多年化肥滥用的土壤中。在贫瘠的沙漠般的试验田里,他们施用了 floris的混合物后,结果长出了些长势良好的作物,不但表面上看起来很健康,而且它们发达的根系可穿透像岩石般坚硬的土壤。而在另一片对比试验田里,依然使用传统的化肥,植物看上去矮且虚弱。

F However, measures like this are not enough to solve the global soil degradation problem. To assess our options on a global scale we first need an accurate picture of what types of soil are out there, and the problems they face. That’s not easy. For one thing, there is no agreed international system for classifying soil. In an attempt to unify the different approaches, the UN has created the Global Soil Map project. Researchers from nine countries are working together to create a map linked to a database that can be fed measurements from field surveys, drone surveys, satellite imagery, lab analyses and so on to provide real-time data on the state of the soil. Within the next four years, they aim to have mapped soils worldwide to a depth of 100 metres, with the results freely accessible to all.

F然而,这种措施无法解决全球土壤退化的问题。想要在全球范围内权衡我们的选择,我们首先需要对土壤类型和它们各自面临的问题有一个准确的了解。这并非易事。一方面,目前还没有国际统一的土壤分类。为了统一不同的方法,联合国成立了全球土壤图项目。来自9个国家的研究人员共同创建了一个与数据库相连的地图,该数据库可以输入实地调查、无人机调查、卫星图像、实验室分析等方式得来的数据,旨在提供关于土壤状态的实时数据。在接下来的4年内,他们的目标是绘制出世界范围内深至100米的土壤的地图,所有的研究结果都可免费公开。

G But this is only a first step. We need ways of presenting the problem that bring it home to governments and the wider public, says Pamela Chasek at the International Institute for Sustainable Development, in Winnipeg, Canada. 'Most scientists don't speak language that policy-makers can understand, and vice versa. ， Chasek and her colleagues have proposed a goal of ‘zero net land degradation，. Like the idea of carbon neutrality, it is an easily understood target that can help shape expectations and encourage action.

For soils on the brink, that may be too late. Several researchers are agitating for the immediate creation of protected zones for endangered soils. One difficulty here is defining what these areas should conserve: areas where the greatest soil diversity is present? Or areas of unspoilt soils that could act as a future benchmark of quality?

Whatever we do, if we want our soils to survive, we need to take action now.

G但这只是解决问题的步。加拿大温尼伯国际可持续发展研究所的 PamelaChasek表示,我们需要想办法让政府和公众知晓问题的存在。他说:“对大多数科学家的说辞,决策者们并不买账,反过来也是这样。” Chasek及其同事们已经提出了一个目标,即“零土壤退化”。就像零碳排放的想法一样,这个目标更易于理解,可以帮助人们制订预期目标,鼓励人们采取行动。

对于濒临退化的土壤,可能为时已晚。一些研究人员鼓劢人们采取行动保护濒危的土壤。其中一个难点是界定应该保护什么样的区域:是土壤多样性的区域?还是未受污染的土壤区域,因为这可以作为未来土壤质量的标准?

无论我们做什么,如果我们布望保持土壤,需要立刻采取行动。

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