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U.S. Coral Reefs Do $1.8 Billion of Work Per Year

A physics lesson may be the last thing on your mind as you relax at the ocean, but:"If you're sitting on a lovely Hawaiian beach with your mai tai and you're looking offshore¹ and you see 20 foot waves and people surfing on them, and you notice that it's only lapping up on the shoreline here with teeny little waves, that's the reef working to dissipate that energy."

物理课可能会在你的头脑你放松的最后一件事在海洋,但是:“如果你坐在一个可爱的夏威夷海滩和你的美态和你离岸20英尺高的海浪,你会看到人们冲浪,你注意到只有研磨的海岸线和微小的波,这就是礁工作能量消散。”

Mike Beck studies the intersection² of engineering, ecology, economics and finance at UC Santa Cruz. He says reefs act a whole lot like our human-built coastal³ infrastructure⁴, to tame the energy of incoming waves. "Coral reefs act just like a low crested⁵ submerged breakwater. That's an engineering term. But it means there are really good engineering models for describing the benefits of reefs."

迈克·贝克在加州大学圣克鲁斯分校(UC Santa Cruz)研究工程学、生态学、经济学和金融学的交叉学科。他说，珊瑚礁就像我们人类建造的沿海基础设施一样，可以抑制海浪的能量。珊瑚礁就像一个低顶的水下防波堤。这是一个工程学术语。但这意味着有很好的工程模型来描述珊瑚礁的好处。”

And those models are the key behind a new report from the US Geological Survey, with Beck as one of its authors. The researchers modeled hypothetical storms hitting coastlines in areas with offshore reefs—like Florida, Hawaii and Puerto Rico. They studied how reefs of various heights would dampen waves and hold back flooding. And they found that, every year, the country's reefs save the U.S. an estimated $1.8 billion dollars in direct flooding damages, and other economic losses.

这些模型是美国地质调查局一份新报告的关键，贝克是该报告的作者之一。研究人员模拟了风暴袭击海岸线的假想场景，比如佛罗里达、夏威夷和波多黎各。他们研究了不同高度的珊瑚礁如何抑制海浪和洪水。他们发现，每年，这个国家的珊瑚礁为美国节省了大约18亿美元的直接洪水损失和其他经济损失。

That dollar number is important. Because it allows reef rebuilding projects—like gluing little healthy coral nubbins on damaged reefs—to tap into billions of dollars of federal money set aside for hurricane and disaster resilience.

这个数字很重要。因为它允许珊瑚礁重建项目——比如在受损的珊瑚礁上粘上健康的小珊瑚虫——利用联邦政府为飓风和抗灾准备的数十亿美元资金。

"If you can rigorously value the benefits of any of these habitats, you can unlock any of the funding mechanisms⁶ that would have typically been applied⁷ to developing a seawall or a breakwater."That's a win-win: for life below the water, and for those of us who live on land as well.

“如果你能严格评估这些栖息地的好处，你就能开启通常用于开发海堤或防波堤的任何融资机制。”这是一个双赢的局面:对于生活在水下的人和我们这些生活在陆地上的人来说都是如此。