濕地的作用有哪些

時間：2019-1-19 16:16:31 作者：雅信博文翻譯

濕地的作用有哪些呢？下面是一篇與此有關的小故事。 雅信博文翻譯公司
As Houston begins recovery efforts from Hurricane Harvey, a new storm threat—Hurricane Irma—is barreling west towards the Caribbean and Florida. We have few defenses against hurricanes' lashing rains and wind and storm surge—but nature does provide one.
"Wetlands act in two ways to reduce the impacts of storms. They reduce storm surge by acting as a wall or a barrier and they act as a sponge by soaking up the waters that come down via rainfall."
Michael Beck is a coastal scientist at The Nature Conservancy and the University  of California Santa Cruz. He says as we've paved over swampy coastlines, we've changed how storm waters flow. Or, for an analogy a little closer to home:
"Rain falls on your driveway, it's going to run straight out into the street. Rain falls in your garden it's going to soak into the ground. When you've done that at the scale of whole watersheds, there's no place for that water to go when it rains."
But some wetlands do remain. Beck and his colleagues teamed up with the insurance industry, and, using the industry's risk assessment models, asked: how much more damage would Hurricane Sandy have delivered if all the eastern seaboard's wetlands were gone? And they found that marshy coastlines saved some $625 million dollars in direct flood damages—or about one percent of Sandy's total cost.
The researchers also battered Ocean County, New Jersey, with thousands of hypothetical storms using flood models. And they found that wetlands cut flood damages there by 16 percent, compared to areas of the county where wetlands are gone. The study is in the journal Scientific Reports.
Next, it's up to local governments and the insurance industry to take notice. "Certainly we hope that we will continue to conserve wetlands in part for their intrinsic beauty and the importance of nature." But he says by putting a price-tag on the economic benefit of wetlands it might change the conversation...about conservation.
當休斯頓剛開始從颶風“哈維”造成的破壞中恢復時，另一場風暴威脅——颶風“艾瑪”正在迅速向西移動，逼近加勒比海和佛羅里達州。對于颶風帶來的狂風暴雨和風暴潮，我們幾乎無法抵抗，但是大自然為我們提供了一道防護。
“濕地有兩種降低風暴影響的方法。其中一種是像墻或屏障那樣抵御風暴潮，另一種是像海綿那樣吸收雨水。”
邁克爾·貝克是大自然保護協(xié)會和加州圣克魯斯大學的海岸科學家。他表示，我們在遍布濕地的海岸線鋪路時，改變了暴雨積水的流向。或者打個更貼近生活的比方：
“落到你家私車道上的雨水會直接流到街上。而落在你家花園里的雨水會滲透到地下。因此，如果整個流域都被改變，那下雨時雨水就無處可以去了。”
但有些濕地還可以吸收水分。貝克和同事同保險業(yè)進行合作，利用保險業(yè)的風險評估模型提出問題：如果美國東海岸所有濕地都消失，那颶風“桑迪”造成的損失比現(xiàn)在多多少？他們發(fā)現(xiàn)，有濕地的海岸可以使洪災造成的直接損失減少約6.25億美元，大約為“桑迪”造成總損失的1%。
研究人員還用洪水模型制造了數(shù)千次假想風暴，“重創(chuàng)”新澤西州海洋縣。他們發(fā)現(xiàn)，與該縣的無濕地區(qū)域相比，洪水在有濕地區(qū)域造成的損失降低了16%。這一研究結果發(fā)表在《科學報告》期刊上。

接下來，當?shù)卣捅ｋU業(yè)要注意了。“我們當然希望能繼續(xù)保護濕地，部分原因是為了濕地本身的美麗以及對自然的重要性。”但是他也表示，為濕地的經(jīng)濟效益貼上價簽，可能會改變濕地保護的對話方式。