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Extreme Storms Are Extreme Eroders 数天百年的效果

In 2013, a rare September storm swept across the plains of Colorado. When it hit the Rockies, it dropped more than a foot of rain in places like Boulder—as much as the city sees in an entire year. The rain unleashed² deadly floods and landslides³ that swept away roads and buildings. In fact, a new study found that a century’s worth of erosion and sedimentation⁵ took place in a matter of a few days.

2013年,9月一场罕见的风暴席卷了科罗拉多平原.当风暴到达洛基山脉,在波德尔城的降雨量超过一英尺——这相当于那里一年的降雨量。雨水导致致命的洪水和山体滑坡，冲走了建筑物、冲毁了道路。事实上，一项新的研究发现，在短短几天降雨就可以酿成一个世纪的雨水侵蚀和泥沙沉积效果。

“Once the flooding started, it happened quickly, and took a lot of people unawares.”

一旦洪水爆发，一切发生的非常的突然，很多人在无意识的情况下，就已经失去生命。

Sara Rathburn, a geoscientist at Colorado State University in Fort Collins who experienced the storm herself. On top of the damage to manmade structures, Rathburn knew that the floods moved huge amounts of sediment⁴, wood, and the organic carbon they contain. She saw a unique opportunity to put hard numbers on what went where: At the base of one of the watersheds⁶ that flooded, a reservoir captured everything that flowed downhill.

Sara Rathburn是科罗拉多州立大学的地球科学家，他自己亲身经历过暴风雨。暴风雨对人造建筑物的损害性最大，Rathburn 了解，洪水可以移动大量的泥沙、树木以及它所能容纳的有机碳。她看见的场景可以说是千载难逢，很难用数字来描述：泛滥的水域底部，水库拦截了流向下游的所有事物。

“I was thinking about being able to track the sediment from the source to what I’m calling this anthropogenic sink—the reservoir—and really quantify it. We don’t have a lot of control on absolutely capturing everything that these large storms produce…and so the fact that the reservoir was capturing everything really seemed like a unique opportunity.”

我在想可以从这个人工水槽——水库——来跟踪沉积物的来源，然后进行量化。我们不能完全控制暴风雨所造成的一切……所以，水库成为了捕捉一切的绝佳机会。

So Rathburn and her colleagues got a Rapid Response Research grant from the National Science Foundation to study what happened. The team compared detailed⁷ maps of the landscape and the lakebed before and after the storm, then they quantified the difference. They found that half a million cubic yards of sediment washed downstream during the storm, a volume that would normally take up to 115 years to erode¹. About 60 percent of it accumulated in the reservoir, taking up 2 percent of its storage space.

所以，Rathburn和她的同事从美国国家科学基金会获得了快速反应研究基金来研究到底发生了什么。研究团队比较了暴风雨发生前后的景观以及详湖底，之后量化了这些区别。他们发现，在暴风雨期间有一百万立方码泥沙被冲到了河流下游，而一般情况下，这需要115年才能完成。而大约60%积累再水库中，占据了水库约2%的存储空间。

The rest of the material was deposited partway down the river, where it will continue to be released into the reservoir for years to come, Rathburn says, causing ongoing⁸ headaches for dam managers…who are also worried about large logs clogging⁹ the openings that they use to release water. The findings are in the journal Geology.

剩余的沉积物部分也集聚在河流下游，未来也将流入水库。Rathburn表示，这造成了大坝管理员持续的困扰……他们还担心有一些大的树木堵塞了水库放水的开口。该研究结果发表在《地质学》杂志上。

The storm was an extreme event. But Rathburn says such episodes are becoming more and more common.

过去暴风雨是一个极端的事件。但是Rathburn说现在暴风雨正变得越来越普遍。

“I really do think it’s climate-change driven. And that it’s something that’s just absolutely worthy¹⁰ and necessary of our study and our investigation¹¹. It’s too risky¹² to ignore, given what it means for people living in places where hazards occur, which is almost everywhere.”

“我真的认为这是气候变化造成的。它绝对是值得且有必要必要进行研究和调查。忽视暴风雪太危险了，因为这意味很多人生活在危险会发生的地方，而这几乎又是无处不在。”