科学美国人60秒:冰川融化使营养物质流失-托福听力下载

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　　科学美国人60秒中英文翻译：冰川融化使营养物质流失

　　科学美国人60秒英文文本

　　The massive ice sheet topping Greenland is losing nearly 300 billion tons a year to melting, according to NASA estimates.

　　And all that meltwater means rising seas.

　　But it's also dumping huge amounts of nutrients and minerals into Arctic waters.

　　"The great thing about glaciers and ice sheets, is that they're these big, very heavy systems, and as they move over rock they grind and crush the rock up."

　　Jon Hawkings, a glacial biogeochemist at the University of Bristol in the U.K.

　　"So they expose all these reactive kind of trace components of the rock lattice to the fresh meltwater that's coming in.”

　　That meltwater funnels rock dust into Greenland's glacial rivers, where Hawkings and his colleagues took their samples.

　　They found that Greenland's rivers are much richer in phosphorus than previously believed.

　　And they estimate that Greenland's glacial rivers may flush some 400,000 tons of phosphorus into ocean waters every year—that's on par with the amount of phosphorous dumped into the ocean by the Mississippi or Amazon rivers.

　　The findings appear in the journal Global Biogeochemical Cycles.

　　All that extra phosphorus could be fertilizer for ocean life.

　　"It's an essential nutrient for phytoplankton, who are the guys on the bottom of the food chain.

　　So it's really, really important for life.

　　And life can't exist without it."

　　And this process—glaciers grinding rocks, then melting and flushing those nutrients to sea—it's not the first time it's happened.

　　In fact, the authors speculate that during the last extreme ice age—the so-called "snowball Earth," some 700 million years ago—all this phosphorus runoff may have caused a bloom in ocean life.

　　A bloom that may have ultimately oxygenated the planet...and paved the way for organisms like us.

　　The massive ice sheet topping Greenland is losing nearly 300 billion tons a year to melting, according to NASA estimates. NASA估计，格陵兰岛巨大的冰盖正以每年3000亿吨的速度融化。

　　And all that meltwater means rising seas. 而所有这些使得海平面上升。

　　But it's also dumping huge amounts of nutrients and minerals into Arctic waters. 但同时大量营养物质及矿物也会流入北极海域。

　　The great thing about glaciers and ice sheets, is that they're these big, very heavy systems, and as they move over rock they grind and crush the rock up. 冰川和冰盖的伟大之处在于巨大的体积，庞大的质量，而且可以在移动岩石的时候进行研磨并最终将其粉碎。

　　Jon Hawkings, a glacial biogeochemist at the University of Bristol in the U.K. 英国布里斯托尔大学的冰川地质学家乔恩霍金斯说道。

　　So they expose all these reactive kind of trace components of the rock lattice to the fresh meltwater that's coming in.” “因此岩石中的丰富微量成分将进入融化雪水中。”

　　All that meltwater funnels rock dust into Greenland's glacial rivers, where Hawkings and his colleagues took their samples. 而融化的雪水将岩石中的沙尘过滤，最终流入格陵兰的冰川河流，而霍金斯和他的同事们对海水进行了取样。

　　They found that Greenland's rivers are much richer in phosphorus than previously believed. 结果他们发现，格陵兰的河流比以前认为的拥有更丰富的磷含量。

　　And they estimate that Greenland's glacial rivers may flush some 400,000 tons of phosphorus into ocean waters every year-that's on par with the amount of phosphorous dumped into the ocean by the Mississippi or Amazon rivers. 而他们估计格陵兰的冰川河流每年会将大约400,000吨的磷注入海洋-而这和密西西比河或亚马逊河每年的磷注入量相等。

　　The findings appear in the journal Global Biogeochemical Cycles. 这项研究已在《全球生物化学循环 》杂志上发表。

　　All that extra phosphorus could be fertilizer for ocean life. “所有这些额外的磷将成为海洋生物的肥料。

　　It's an essential nutrient for phytoplankton, who are the guys on the bottom of the food chain. 而对于食物链底层的浮游植物而言，磷是不可或缺的营养元素。

　　So it's really, really important for life. 因此磷对生命而言真的至关重要。

　　And life can't exist without it. 没有磷，生命就无法存活。”

　　And this process-glaciers grinding rocks, then melting and flushing those nutrients to sea-it's not the first time it's happened. 而冰川研磨岩石将营养物质融化后流入海洋的这一过程并不罕见。

　　In fact, the authors speculate that during the last extreme ice age-the so-called snowball Earth, some 700 million years ago-all this phosphorus runoff may have caused a bloom in ocean life. 该研究的作者估计，实际上在过去的极端冰河时代-7亿年前雪球假说中，正是这些磷使得海洋生命茁壮成长。

　　A bloom that may have ultimately oxygenated the planet...and paved the way for organisms like us. 而生命异彩纷呈的绽放最终使得我们的星球有氧化，并为我们人类奠定了基础。

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