NATOINAL GEOGRAPHIC 国家地理
从本周开始，每周与喜爱地理的词友共同分享一则国家地理方面的新闻。由于没有中文版，大家可自行翻译，多少随兴。同时欢迎大家推荐其他地理相关知识及新闻。每周送出50分，以奖励表现活跃的词友。
BEFORE & AFTER: 3rd Largest Rain Forest Vanishing Fast
第三大雨林消失前后
June 6, 2008—Satellite images show Papua New Guinea's Gulf Province
rain forestintact in 1988 (left) and laid bare by logging in 2002. The images were released this week as part of a new study.
At the current rate of destruction, 53 percent of the country's rain forest—said to be the world's third largest—will disappear by 2021, according to the study of three decades of satellite imagery. Between 1972 and 2002 alone, 19.8 million acres (8 million hectares) were lost.
"It was previously thought that PNG had a very low or nonexistent rate of deforestation and degradation," study co-author Phil Shearman, of the University of Papua New Guinea, told Britain's Telegraph newspaper.
"Our study is making it reasonably clear that's not the case—indeed PNG is losing its rain forest at rates comparable to that of the Congo and to that of the Amazon."
Along with trees, unique animals and plants are expected to vanish. And because trees absorb the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, the deforestation could encourage global warming.
Twenty-two million tons of carbon will be released from Papua New Guinea's forests this year as a result of logging-industry action—approximately the equivalent of the annual output of all carbon from the cars in Australia, the report's authors said.
Lee Tan of the Australian Conservation Foundation, said, "We can very confidently predict that if more of the forests are cut, there will be erosion, there will be landslides, lives lost and other calamities"—not to mention the potential loss of species diversity.
"We fear logging and other forms of degradation are wiping out the forests before we even know what is there," Tan said.
Papua New Guinean officials have proposed that the international community pay the country for preserving the forest and that loggers plant three trees for every one they remove.
—Associated Press, Sydney, Australia
【国家地理】---本周---电脑壁纸下载
点击图片,进行下载
Living Rainbow, Lisse, Netherlands, 1999
1024×768
Boundless Biplane, Florida Keys, 1997
1024×768
Tundra Village, Moriusaq, Greenland, 2006
1280×1024
Cumberland Island, Georgia
1024×768
Tornado in Manitoba
1024×768
最后由 Honey 前辈 于 2008-06-07 18:58:04编辑 |
其实我很喜欢看国家地理~~~~~~~~~
