科学美国人60秒 SSS 热带树木常被闪电击中致死（在线收听）

This is Scientific American's 60-second Science, I'm Scott Hershberger.

这里是科学美国人——60秒科学系列，我是斯科特·赫什伯格。

The chance that a human being like you will be struck by lightning is minuscule. But what if you're a tall tree in the tropics?

像你这样的人类被闪电击中的几率微乎其微。但如果你是热带的一棵大树呢？

"Lightning happens in milliseconds. We can't predict where it's going to be, and we generally can't find it after it's happened, so what a hard thing to study."

“闪电发生在几毫秒之内。我们无法预测它的位置，而且在它发生后我们通常也找不到它，因此闪电是很难研究的东西。”

Evan Gora, an ecologist at the University of Louisville.

路易斯威尔大学的生态学家埃文·戈拉说到。

Now, for the first time, Gora and his colleagues were able to quantify the effects of lightning strikes in tropical forests around the world—thanks to satellite data and a network of ground sensors.

现在，得益于卫星数据和地面传感器网络，戈拉及其同事首次能够量化全球热带森林中雷击的影响。

"We saw that forests that have more lightning strikes hitting per hectare per year have fewer large trees per hectare, presumably because they're killed by lightning.

“我们发现，每年每公顷遭受雷击次数较多的森林，其每公顷的大树数量较少，这可能是因为大树被雷击致死。

More biomass turns over every year, so basically, the lightning seems to be affecting the forests and causing trees to die.

每年都有更多的生物量翻转，因此基本上，闪电似乎正在影响森林，导致树木死亡。

And then they have less total biomass."

之后总生物量也会减少。”

In a ground survey in Panama, the researchers found that a single lightning strike typically damages more than 20 trees.

在巴拿马的一次地面调查中，研究人员发现一次雷击通常会毁坏20多棵树。

And within a year, five or six of them die.

一年之内，其中五六棵树会死掉。

The scientists combined this figure with their satellite data from around the world to estimate how many trees in tropical forests die each year due to lightning.

科学家将这一数字与来自世界各地的卫星数据结合起来，以估计每年热带森林中有多少棵树死于闪电。

"We think around 830 million trees are struck by lightning, and about a quarter of those, around 200 million, are killed. So that's a lot.

“我们认为约有8.3亿棵树被闪电击中，其中约有四分之一（即2亿棵左右）死亡。这相当多了。

And as I mentioned before, we know that it's not just a random tree in the forest: typically, it's the largest trees."

正如我之前提到的，我们知道被击中的不是森林中随便一棵树：通常是最大的树。”

The study is in the journal Global Change Biology.

这项研究发表在《全球变化生物学》期刊上。

Gora says the findings reveal that that lightning is one of the most important natural factors killing trees in the tropics.

戈拉表示，研究结果表明，闪电是热带地区致树木死亡的最重要的自然因素之一。

How climate change will affect lightning patterns is not well-understood.

气候变化会如何影响闪电模式尚不清楚。

But some models predict more frequent lightning as the planet continues to warm—which could mean even more carbon-storing trees would disappear.

但一些模型预测，随着地球持续变暖，闪电活动将更加频繁，这可能意味着更多的储存碳树木将消失。

"Tropical forests basically function as our planet's, you know, main terrestrial air conditioner.

“热带森林基本上是地球的主要陆地空调。

So if we're decreasing the carbon stored in them,

因此，如果我们减少森林的碳储存量，

that's going to have a big effect on their ability to continue, you know, conditioning our planet and taking up all that carbon that we're producing."

这将对森林继续调节我们的星球并吸收我们产生的所有碳的能力产生重大影响。”

Gora's work is just the beginning of this research.

戈拉的工作只是这项研究的开始。

He hopes that future technological advances and fieldwork will help scientists better understand lightning's role in ecosystems across the planet.

他希望未来的技术进步和实地考查将帮助科学家更好地了解闪电在整个地球生态系统中的作用。

The findings should be illuminating.

这些发现应该具有启发性。

Thanks for listening for Scientific American's 60-second Science. I'm Scott Hershberger.

谢谢大家收听科学美国人——60秒科学。我是斯科特·赫什伯格。