VOA常速英语:Experts Turn Old Coal Mines into Carbon-Sucking Forests

Deep within West Virginia’s Monongahela National Forest lies a rare stand of virgin woods. Living in the East, there’s not many places that you can go and be untouched by man.
在西弗吉尼亚州莫农加希拉国家森林深处，有一片罕见的原始森林。生活在东方，很少有地方能够不被人类破坏。

Shane Jones is a biologist with the US Forest Service, he says a mapping mistake spared these trees when the surrounding forest was logged decades ago. That’s good because red spruce forests like this one excel at taking planet warming carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and locking it away in the soil. You know that organic material it’s black because it’s incredibly high in carbon.
肖恩·琼斯是美国林务局的生物学家，他说，几十年前，周围的森林被砍伐，而这里的树木却因为地图绘制错误而幸免于难。这很好，因为像这样的红色云杉林能够把使地球变暖的二氧化碳带出大气层，并将其固定在土壤里。你看，这里的有机物质是黑色的，因为其碳含量高得惊人。

The mountains of Appalachia have lost 90 percent of their red spruce forests to logging and coal mining. Burning that coal for energy is adding more and more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.As the planet warms scientists say the need for forests to remove that CO2 is increasingly urgent. The University of Kentucky’s Chris Barton says tropical rainforests get the most attention. But here in the temperate region of the world in Appalachia, four hours away from Washington DC,we have billions of trees that potentially we could be planting. Where better Barton says then here on the remains of old strip mines.
由于伐木和采煤，阿巴拉契亚山脉失去了百分之九十的红云杉林。人们燃烧煤炭作为能源，会向大气中排放越来越多的二氧化碳。科学家说，随着地球变暖，通过森林植被来消耗二氧化碳的需求日益迫切。肯塔基大学的克里斯·巴顿说，热带雨林最受人们关注。但是在这个世界的温带地区，阿巴拉契亚，这个距离华盛顿特区有四小时车程的地方可以种植数十亿棵树。巴顿说，没有比这个旧露天矿的残余物上更适合种树地方了。

That ’s one reason Barton started a group called Green Forests Work to put trees back on the roughly 400,000 hectares of Appalachian forests that have been strip mined away. But there’s a problem with many of these lands.If you went out and planted trees on these sites, they just didn’t grow. The ground was way too, you know, compacted, water didn’t infiltrate, roots can’t penetrate, oxygen can’t circulate in those environments. The solution looks more like a Game of Thrones battleground than a forest in the making.Ripping up the compacted ground will let the trees they plant put down roots.
这也是巴顿成立一个名为“绿色森林”组织的原因之一，该组织致力于恢复约四十万公顷阿巴拉契亚森林，这些森林已经被开采殆尽。但是很多土地都有问题，如果你在这些地方种树，它们就是无法生长。这里的土壤很实，水无法渗透，根不能深入生长，氧气无法在这样的环境中流通。这个解决方案使这里看上去更像是一个“权力的游戏”的角斗场，远非一个正在恢复中的森林。人们把夯实的土地挖开，他们种的树就可以生根了。

Barton says it’s not always easy to convince people it’s a good idea. We’ve had a lot of people kind of look at us twice, but it’s…the really interesting thing about it is after we do it, there’s no question that was the right thing to do.They’re starting to see results. Forests are coming back on the grounds they’ve ripped up and replanted.
巴顿说，要说服人们这是个好主意并不容易。有很多人都心存顾虑，但是，很有意思的是，在我们完成了这件事之后，人们毫无疑问都认为这是正确的事情。他们开始看到结果了。就在这些树木曾经被采伐的土地上，森林正在恢复原状。

In West Virginia alone, restoring red spruce to its old habitat could lock up the equivalent of 56 million barrels of oil, scientists say. But not right away, it will take decades. Shane Jones says patience is key.It’s really awesome to see a tree planted eight years ago that now waist high,but at the end of the day, at the end of my day, we’re barely getting started because our main goal with the restoration work that we do here is to basically take actions to then let nature take over. Around the world, experts say, nature offers powerful tools to fight climate change. Nature works slowly, they say, but it works.
科学家说，仅在西弗吉尼亚州，恢复红云杉的旧栖息地就相当于抵消了五千六百万桶石油储量带来的影响。但不是现在，这需要几十年的时间。肖恩·琼斯说重要的是要有耐心。看到八年前种下的树苗现在已经长到齐腰高真是太棒了，但是在每一天结束的时候，在我一天的工作结束的时候，我们的大工程其实才刚刚开始，因为我们在这里所做的修复工作的主要目标是采取基本行动，然后让自然来接管我们的工作。专家说，在世界各地，大自然为应对气候变化提供了强有力的工具。他们说，大自然的作用是缓慢的，但却是有效的。

Steve Baragona VOA News Elkins West Virginia
美国之音记者Steve Baragona西弗吉尼亚埃尔金斯报道