歐洲森林「大火」燒不停 英文怎麼說?

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極端氣候下,全球的乾旱、熱浪,以及隨之發生的森林大火越演越烈,更加重碳排放的情形。不免令人聯想,氣候變遷是否為推波助瀾的兇手之一?今天詩綺老師帶著大家從相關新聞學英文

1. 澳洲大火

As catastrophic fires have burned more than two million acres in Australia, dozens of koalas have been rescued from smoldering trees and ashen ground. The animals are already as threatened species before these latest blazes ravaged a crucial habitat.

澳洲災難性的大火已燒毀200多萬英畝土地,數十隻無尾熊從悶燒的樹木和灰燼獲救。在最近幾起大火破壞這片重要的棲息地前,該物種本已瀕危。

The plight of the koala—a national symbol of Australia—has raised questions among conservationists and scientists about what it will take to preserve biodiversity in a country increasingly prone to intense fire, extreme heat and water scarcity, and which already has among the highest rates of species extinction in the world.

作為澳洲的國家標誌,無尾熊的困境環保人士和科學家中間引發了討論:在一個越來越容易遭受大火、極端高溫天氣和水資源匱乏,並且物種滅絕率高居世界前列的國家,要如何保護生物的多樣性

2. 亞馬遜雨林大火

Since January 2019, staggering 121,000 fires have broken out across Brazil—and more than half of those fires are taking place in the Amazon. The fires are destroying the homes of indigenous tribes, threatening millions of animals, and even darkening the skies over major cities.

自從2019年1起,在巴西各地已有總計驚人的12萬1000起火災。而且超過半數發生在亞馬遜雨林的區域。野火摧毀原住民部落,威脅上百萬動物的生命,甚至讓許多重要城市的天空都因煙霧影響而變得漆黑。

The fires in the Amazon are nearly all man-made. These fires are often deliberately set as part of slash-and-burn agriculture—a method of growing food in which farmers and cattle ranchers deliberately cut down and burn forestland to clear it for crops and livestock.

在亞馬遜的野火大多是人為的。這些森林火災是為了農業刻意點燃,當地的農作方式是先砍伐樹木後將其點燃,因此農夫與畜牧業者得以焚燒清空樹林,作為開發土地種植大豆或飼養牲畜之用。

The abundance of life in Amazon is vital to the survival of human societies, providing everything from raw materials to functioning ecosystems.

從原物料提供到生態系統的運轉,亞馬遜雨林豐富的生物對人類社會的生存極為重要

The Amazon plays a crucial role in regulating the climate, with its trees absorbing and storing millions of tons of carbon dioxide—a key greenhouse gas that drives global climate change. Deforestation releases this trapped carbon into the atmosphere.

由於亞馬遜雨林能夠吸收並儲存數百萬噸以上的二氧化碳—— 二氧化碳是引發氣候變遷的關鍵溫室氣體,因此亞馬遜雨林在全球氣候調節扮演相當重要的角色。濫砍森林就會讓雨林吸收的二氧化碳釋放到大氣中。

更多相關新聞,請參考下方連結。
https://phys.org/news/2019-10-amazon-rainforest.html
https://cn.nytimes.com/asia-pacific/20191114/australia-koalas-fire/zh-hant/

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