词汇大师-- What Does Ecology Mean to You?

　　AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster: more of our interview with Rob Jackson, director of the Global Change Center at Duke University with some terms you're likely to hear in the climate change debate.
RS: We start with an explanation of the term "ecosystem¹ capital."

　　ROB JACKSON: "Ecosystem capital, or maybe put differently - ecosystem services - are the value of what we get from natural systems. For instance, a city such as New York City can spend a lot of money to build a sewage treatment or water treatment plant. Alternatively the city might buy a thousand or five hundred thousand acres, whatever the value is, of land and use natural capital, natural services, to cleanse² that water for us.
"That is, in fact, what New York City did some years ago, saving hundreds of millions of dollars. So you allow nature to do the work for you, and then you find a way to put an economic value on that work. And that's where the term ecosystem capital comes from."
RS: "Another phrase that was thrown at me was -- we need to be looking at our ecosystem services, as you say, and not as much at 'charismatic mega fauna³.' [laughter]"
ROB JACKSON: "Yes. Charismatic mega fauna are the large, sexy mammals that people like to watch. So that might be an elk⁴, a bear, a wildebeest in Africa, an elephant -- "
AA: "Polar bears."
ROB JACKSON: "Polar bears is another great example. So we tend to focus on these large animals and we often tend to manage and set up preserves for these large animals. And those animals are charismatic -- they're pretty, they're nice to look at, but they're often not the animals that provide the ecosystem services that we value most."
RS: "And the point I understood was that we should be looking at our undervalued ecosystems⁵ -- or we should value our ecosystems more in comparison."
ROB JACKSON: "That's right. One of the problems with our current economics is that we don't do a good job of putting a value on the services that we get from nature. So it's easy to assign a value to what a power plant uses or produces, or to what a sewage treatment plant cleanses⁶ our water. It's not easy to put an economic value on what nature does for us.
"Plants cleanse our air. The soil cleanses our water. But that cleansing⁷, that purification and all the many resources that we get from nature often fall outside our accounting⁸ system. And so we're just simply not very good at taking into account what nature gives us."
AA: "Now one of the services that nature provides us, obviously, is food, and that brings us to another term that we're hearing a lot lately, which is 'food miles.' Why don't you define it."
ROB JACKSON: "Well, sure. This is one for me that's pretty new, but food miles are the number of miles that food travels before ending up on your plate, and that the higher the food miles the greater the environmental cost associated with the food -- how much energy was used to transport that food to actually put it in front of you and me."
RS: "Now, I think the importance of these terms is to raise awareness⁹."
ROB JACKSON: "I agree with that. But they also, I mean they are -- I know that they do sound jargony and some of them are jargony. But there are, for some of these at least, fairly specific meanings. And, in fact, in the scientific community, some of these terms have much narrower meanings than come to be the meaning in just common usage."
RS: "Can you give us an example?"
ROB JACKSON: "Well, let's start with maybe the most basic example, just the word 'ecology.' I think when you walk up to someone on the street and ask them what ecology means, people will bring up recycling and sort of saving the environment, saving the planet.
"As a science, the field of ecology studies how plants and animals and organisms interact with the environment around them. It has a much narrower sense and really doesn't say anything about recycling or about environment stewardship¹⁰. But it has come to be viewed as saving the planet because many ecologists, myself included, really care about the environment and valuing the environment."
AA: "And 'sustainability,' which will be our final term, if you could maybe explain that."
ROB JACKSON: "Sure. Sustainability is another one of these words that has kind of a life of its own, a lot of different meanings. But the idea is that we need to think about long-term consequences of how we live and how we manufacture things. So are we building something in a way that will allow people in fifty years or a hundred years or a decade to build the same product in the same way? Or are we using a resource in an unsustainable manner, are we polluting a body of water or are we polluting air in a way that will cost people down the road?"
RS: Rob Jackson is a professor of biology and environmental sciences at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. You can hear the first part of our discussion on the Wordmaster website at voanews.com/wordmaster.
AA: And that's Wordmaster for this week. Our e-mail address is [email protected]. With Rosanne Skirble, I'm Avi Arditti.
CPF/AA/fil

1 ecosystem   

n.生态系统

参考例句：

• This destroyed the ecosystem of the island.这样破坏了岛上的生态系统。
• We all have an interest in maintaining the integrity of the ecosystem.维持生态系统的完整是我们共同的利益。

2 cleanse   

vt.使清洁，使纯洁，清洗

参考例句：

• Health experts are trying to cleanse the air in cities. 卫生专家们正设法净化城市里的空气。
• Fresh fruit juices can also cleanse your body and reduce dark circles.新鲜果汁同样可以清洁你的身体,并对黑眼圈同样有抑制作用。

3 fauna   

n.(一个地区或时代的)所有动物，动物区系

参考例句：

• This National Park is an area with unique fauna and flora.该国家公园区域内具有独特的动物种群和植物种群。
• Fauna is a biological notion means all the animal life in a particular region or period. 动物群是一个生物学的概念，指的是一个特定时期或者地区的所有动物。

4 elk   

n.麋鹿

参考例句：

• I was close enough to the elk to hear its labored breathing.我离那头麋鹿非常近，能听见它吃力的呼吸声。
• The refuge contains the largest wintering population of elk in the world.这座庇护所有着世界上数量最大的冬季麋鹿群。

5 ecosystems   

n.生态系统( ecosystem的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• There are highly sensitive and delicately balanced ecosystems in the forest. 森林里有高度敏感、灵敏平衡的各种生态系统。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Madagascar's ecosystems range from rainforest to semi-desert. 马达加斯加生态系统类型多样，从雨林到半荒漠等不一而足。 来自辞典例句

6 cleanses   

弄干净，清洗( cleanse的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

• Prayer cleanses the soul, but pain cleanses the body. 祈祷净化灵魂，而痛苦则净化身体。
• With water and iodine from the closet, he cleanses my lip. 用温水和碘从壁橱里，他洗净我的嘴唇。

7 cleansing   

n. 净化(垃圾) adj. 清洁用的 动词cleanse的现在分词

参考例句：

• medicated cleansing pads for sensitive skin 敏感皮肤药物清洗棉
• Soap is not the only cleansing agent. 肥皂并不是唯一的清洁剂。

8 accounting   

n.会计，会计学，借贷对照表

参考例句：

• A job fell vacant in the accounting department.财会部出现了一个空缺。
• There's an accounting error in this entry.这笔账目里有差错。

9 awareness   

n.意识，觉悟，懂事，明智

参考例句：

• There is a general awareness that smoking is harmful.人们普遍认识到吸烟有害健康。
• Environmental awareness has increased over the years.这些年来人们的环境意识增强了。

10 stewardship   

n. n. 管理工作；管事人的职位及职责

参考例句：

• The organization certainly prospered under his stewardship. 不可否认，这个组织在他的管理下兴旺了起来。
• Last, but certainly not least, are the issues of stewardship and ethics. 最后，但当然不是微不足道的，是工作和道德规范的问题。