2024考研英语同源外刊1月:生物多样性
HUMAN SOCIETIES depend on healthy ecosystems. People consume their products in the shape of fish, meat, crops, timber, and fibres such as cotton and silk. Medicines may be directly harvested from the natural world or inspired by molecules and mechanisms found within it. The ecosystems that crops depend upon are regulated by living things. Through photosynthesis, trees and other plants take in carbon and pump out oxygen. In doing so they remove roughly 11 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere each year, equivalent to 27% of what human industry and agriculture emit (the oceans absorb a further 10 billion tonnes).
人类社会依赖于健康的生态系统。人们以鱼、肉、农作物、木材以及棉花和丝绸等形式消费生态系统的产品。药物可能直接来源于自然界，或者受到其中分子和机制的启发。农作物依赖的生态系统受到生物的调控。通过光合作用，树木和其他植物吸收二氧化碳并释放氧气。这样一来，它们每年从大气中去除大约110亿吨二氧化碳，相当于人类工业和农业排放的27%（海洋吸收了另外100亿吨）。
The services that ecosystems provide to humanity depend, in turn, on there being a diversity of living things. More than 75% of global food-crop types, including coffee, cocoa, and almonds, are pollinated by animals. The complex web underpinning every food chain and ecosystem means that the narrow range of species that humans eat and exploit cannot be sustained without the existence of a much greater diversity of animals, plants, and bacteria.
生态系统为人类提供的服务反过来又取决于生物的多样性。超过75%的全球农作物类型，包括咖啡、可可和杏仁，都是由动物传粉的。支撑每个食物链和生态系统的复杂网络意味着人类消费和利用的物种范围狭窄，无法在没有更广泛的动植物和细菌多样性的情况下维持。
More diverse forests store more carbon than monocultures. Skipjack tuna makes up roughly half of the global tuna catch for human consumption. As young animals, they eat zooplankton, which is to say very small floating animals like tunicates, ctenophores, and small crustaceans as well as the larvae of larger animals. As adults, they eat smaller fish, squid, and crustaceans. To conserve the skipjack, all this diversity in its food chain must also be conserved.
更为多样化的森林比单一文化更能储存碳。跳金枪鱼占全球金枪鱼捕捞的大约一半，供人类消费。作为幼年动物，它们吃浮游动物，即非常小的漂浮动物，如被裹类、栉水母类和小型甲壳类，以及较大动物的幼虫。成年后，它们吃较小的鱼、鱿鱼和甲壳类。为了保护跳金枪鱼，必须保护其食物链中的所有这些多样性。
Since the 1990s, alarmed by studies showing rapid declines in animal and plant species around the globe, ecologists have talked of an impending mass extinction. It would be the sixth in the Earth’s history, but one unlike any that has come before. Surveys show that the loss of biodiversity is the result of a combination of factors: climate change, pollution, human exploitation of land, sea, plants, and animals, and the displacement of some species into new territories where they play havoc with existing ecosystems. Uniquely in Earth’s history, each of these drivers of ecological change is caused by a single species: Homo sapiens.
自上世纪90年代以来，生态学家们在全球范围内对动植物物种迅速减少的研究感到担忧，他们谈论着一场即将发生的物种大灭绝。这将是地球历史上的第六次，但与以往任何一次都不同。调查显示，生物多样性的丧失是多种因素的结果：气候变化、污染、人类对土地、海洋、植物和动物的开发，以及一些物种被迫进入新领土，在那里它们对现有生态系统造成严重破坏。在地球历史上独一无二的是，导致生态变化的每一个驱动因素都是由一个单一物种引起的：智人。
When IPBES (the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, similar to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) published its assessment of the state of global biodiversity in 2019, it offered a sobering picture. Roughly 1 million animal and plant species were deemed to be at risk of extinction, more than at any other point in human history. These included many that are used in farming. At least 9% of the 6,200 breeds of domesticated mammals that humans eat, or use to produce food, had become extinct by 2016, and at least 1,000 more are threatened. More than one-third of continental land area and nearly three-quarters of freshwater resources are used to produce crops or livestock, but environmental degradation has damaged the land’s ability to support these activities. And one-third of marine fish stocks were being unsustainably exploited in 2015.
当生物多样性和生态系统服务政府间科学政策平台（类似于气候变化政府间专门委员会）在2019年发布其全球生物多样性状况评估时，呈现了一个令人深思的画面。大约有100万种动植物物种被认为处于灭绝的风险之中，这是人类历史上任何时候都不及的。其中包括许多用于农业的物种。到2016年，人类食用或用于生产食物的6200种家养哺乳动物中，至少有9%已经灭绝，至少还有1000多种濒临灭绝。超过三分之一的大陆土地面积和将近四分之三的淡水资源被用于生产农作物或牲畜，但环境恶化已损害了土地支持这些活动的能力。2015年，有三分之一的海洋鱼类资源在不可持续地被开发。
The biodiversity crisis poses as great a risk to human societies as climate change. Yet it has a fraction of the public profile. In part that is because the loss of biodiversity cannot be neatly quantified, as climate change can, into parts per million of carbon dioxide, or degrees above pre-industrial average temperatures. And the webs that link species within and across ecosystems are even more complex than the processes that drive climate change.
生物多样性危机对人类社会构成的风险与气候变化一样大。然而，它却没有气候变化那么引起公众关注。部分原因是生物多样性的丧失不能像气候变化那样被清晰地量化，不能用百万分之几的二氧化碳或高于前工业时期平均温度的度数来表示。而且，物种在生态系统内部和之间的联系比引起气候变化的过程更为复杂。
Understanding a problem, however, is a necessary step towards solving it. And that is where technology can help. This Technology Quarterly will consider its role in monitoring, preserving and restoring ecosystems and species. Only by measuring the state of ecosystems can their health be assessed, losses be quantified, and the effectiveness of interventions be evaluated.
然而，了解问题是解决问题的必要步骤。这就是技术可以发挥作用的地方。本技术季度将考虑技术在监测、保护和恢复生态系统和物种中的作用。只有通过测量生态系统的状态，才能评估它们的健康状况，量化损失，并评估干预措施的有效性。
重点词汇翻译及例句：
Biodivesity (生物多样性)
Example: Conservation efforts aim to protect and preserve the biodiversity of endangered species.
Photosynthesis (光合作用)
Example: Photosynthesis is the process by which plants convert sunlight into energy for growth.
Monocultures (单一文化)
Example: Large-scale farming often leads to monocultures, which can be vulnerable to pests and diseases.
Quantify (量化)
Example: It's challenging to quantify the economic value of ecosystem services.
长难句翻译：
Despite the complexity of the interrelationships within ecosystems, technology plays a pivotal role in not only quantifying the health of these systems, assessing losses, and evaluating the effectiveness of interventions but also in raising awareness about the intricate web of biodiversity that, if lost, could pose a threat to human societies as profound as climate change.
（尽管生态系统内部关系复杂，技术在量化这些系统的健康状况、评估损失和评估干预措施的有效性方面发挥着关键作用，同时还通过唤起对生物多样性错综复杂网络的认识，如果失去可能对人类社会构成与气候变化同样深刻的威胁。）
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