树木代替草坪拯救缺水的天使之城--中国数字科技馆
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树木代替草坪拯救缺水的天使之城

树木代替草坪拯救缺水的天使之城(科学60S) 0:00/0:00
最新发布时间: 2017-10-24
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Evaporation from overwatered lawns cost the city of Los Angeles 70 billion gallons of wasted water a year. But the city's trees were much thriftier.

大量的水从过涝的草坪上蒸发掉,这导致洛杉矶每年要消耗700亿加仑的水。但是树木就节省很多了。

 

撰文/播音:克里斯托弗·因塔利亚塔(Christopher Intagliata)

翻译:路识宇

审校:郭晓

 

When California was strangled by drought, the city of Los Angeles was offering homeowners cash to replace their lawns with landscaping that was less thirsty. Because water just evaporates from overwatered lawns. But how much?

当加利福尼亚因为干旱而举步维艰时,洛杉矶则开始给房主们提供现金,让他们将草坪替换成水需求量较小的景观绿化。因为水会从施水过多的草坪蒸发出去。但是蒸发的量到底有多少呢?

 

"So that turned out to be a lot of water." Diane Pataki, an ecologist at the University of Utah. "It turned out to be 70 billion gallons of water a year." 

“其实蒸发掉的水非常多。”犹他大学的生态学家Diane Pataki说,“每年蒸发掉的水有700亿加仑。”

 

Pataki and her team got that number using a combination of real-world sensor data and modeling. And they found that, of water wasted specifically in urban landscaping, lawns were to blame for three quarters, with L.A.'s six million trees accounting for the rest. 

Pataki 和她的团队将真实的传感器数据与模型相结合,从而得出了这个数据。他们发现,洛杉矶在城市绿化上消耗的水,四分之三用于草坪,剩下的用于城市里的六百万颗树。

 

The study also uncovered something these ecologists were not expecting to study: economic disparity. "The amount of vegetation is really closely related to affluence. So in L.A. that means wealthy neighborhoods actually have twice the evapotranspiration of poorer neighborhoods." Meaning low income neighborhoods not only miss out on that greenery: but also the natural, built-in cooling effect of evapotranspiration. The findings are in the journal Water Resources Research. [E. Litvak et al., Evapotranspiration of urban landscapes in Los Angeles, California at the municipal scale]

生态学家们还从这项研究中发现了一个他们没有意料到的问题:经济差异。植被的数量与富裕度密切相关。所以在洛杉矶,这意味着富裕地区的水蒸散量实际上是贫困地区的两倍。”也就是说低收入地区不但没有绿化,而且还错失了蒸散带来的天然制冷的效果。这些研究结果发表在《水资源研究》杂志上。

 

Finally: if you think native trees are the solution to water waste? Think again, Pataki says. "Some of the highest water users in L.A. are those species, including the native California sycamore, which is a very, very popular tree." The reason being that southern California doesn't have a lot of native trees, except alongside rivers—meaning they're water guzzlers by nature.

最后:如果你认为本地的树是水资源浪费的解决方案的话,那么还请三思,Pataki 说。“在洛杉矶,消耗水量最大的就是这些本地树木,其中包括非常常见的加利福尼亚本地枫树。”这是因为除了沿着河边生长的树木之外,加利福尼亚南部并没有很多本地树木,这就意味着它们是天然的水资源消耗者。

 

Better, she says, to plant other species that thrive in Mediterranean climates, like water-thrifty pines and palms. Because even if the drought comes back, she says, L.A.'s secret to staying green may be its trees. "It doesn't take a lot of water in terms of absolute gallons to keep them alive. So moving forward L.A. could be very water efficient and maintain a very extensive tree canopy, which I think is good news."

她说,最好是种一些适合在地中海气候生长的物种,像需水量小的松树和棕榈树。因为即使干旱再度来临,洛杉矶保持绿意盎然的秘密可能就在于这些树木了。它们不需要很多水就能存活。所以在未来,洛杉矶可能会发展成为一个节水,同时又有广大绿色覆盖的城市。我觉得这是个好消息。

—Christopher Intagliata


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