VOA标准英语2012--Study: Noisy Environment Affects Plants

Study: Noisy Environment Affects Plants

 

Researchers haven’t given much thought to the effect of noise and noise pollution on plants.

But that could be about to change.

In northwestern New Mexico’s Rattlesnake Canyon¹, gnarled juniper trees and pi?on pines dominate a landscape of high mesas and rough sandstone cliffs.

Tucked in among the trees are thousands of natural gas wells. About one-third of them are pressurized by ear-splitting compressors.

“They run 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, with the exception of periodic maintenance, so they are going all the time,” says Clinton Francis, of the National Evolutionary² Synthesis Center in North Carolina.

Since 2005, he’s been studying how Rattlesnake Canyon’s birds respond to the compressors’ non-stop racket.

“Black-chinned hummingbirds³, for example, tend to prefer and settle in really noisy landscapes, and western scrub jays tend to avoid these noisy areas,” Francis says.

So the noise in the canyon is changing the way the birds behave. And that got Francis wondering whether that’s having an effect on plants the birds interact with. Take pi?on pine trees and scrub jays, for example.

“We know that jays are really important seed dispersers for pi?on pine,” he says.

The jays bury the seeds to snack on later, but inevitably⁴, some get forgotten and grow into new pine trees.

Francis already knew there were fewer pine seedlings⁵ at noisy sites. Was that because the noise was keeping the jays away from their pine nuts?

Francis set up motion-trigger cameras at both noisy and quiet sites, put out some pine seeds, and waited.

As he predicted, jays avoided the noisy sites, not stashing⁶ any nuts there.

“We only found them removing seeds on the quiet sites,” he says.

That observation confirmed what Francis had expected: jays were only collecting and burying seeds at quiet sites.

But that wasn’t the only thing the cameras saw. At the noisy sites, mice were gobbling up the seeds, leaving nothing behind to sprout⁷.

So for the pine trees, it looked like the compressor noise was delivering a double whammy.

“We’re just not getting as many seeds going into the seed bank in noisy areas, and the ones that do might be consumed by the mice that are there.”

But Francis says the effects of the noise on the canyon’s plants weren’t all bad. A flower pollinated by hummingbirds did better near the compressors. Remember, hummingbirds seem to like the noise - probably, Francis says, because it drives away the scrub jays that would otherwise eat the hummingbirds’ eggs and young.

University of California Davis ecologist Gail Patricelli also studies how gas drilling noise affects birds - in her case, the greater sage⁸ grouse⁹. She says as far as she knows, Francis’s work is the first to show how noise impacts plants.

“You kind of hit yourself on the forehead and think, why didn’t I think of that?” Patricelli says.

Even while working at a remote field site in Wyoming, Patricelli hears plenty of noise.

“We hear airplanes, we hear roads going, you know, way off in the distance that are too far away to see, and yet you can still hear them," she says. "Because sound travels much, much further than a lot of the other types of disturbance¹⁰. And so it’s just an enormous land area that’s impacted by noise and we know remarkably¹¹ little about what that noise does to the ecosystem¹².”

But it seems likely that for long-lived species like the pi?on pines in New Mexico’s Rattlesnake Canyon, the effects of noise may continue to reverberate¹³ long after the sound of the compressors has gone silent.

1 canyon   

n.峡谷，溪谷

参考例句：

• The Grand Canyon in the USA is 1900 metres deep.美国的大峡谷1900米深。
• The canyon is famous for producing echoes.这个峡谷以回声而闻名。

2 evolutionary   

adj.进化的；演化的，演变的；[生]进化论的

参考例句：

• Life has its own evolutionary process.生命有其自身的进化过程。
• These are fascinating questions to be resolved by the evolutionary studies of plants.这些十分吸引人的问题将在研究植物进化过程中得以解决。

3 hummingbirds   

n.蜂鸟( hummingbird的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Hummingbirds have discovered that nectar and pollen are very nutritious. 蜂鸟发现花蜜和花粉是很有营养的。
• Why do hummingbirds and gorillas both have backbones? 为什么蜂鸟和大猩猩都有脊骨？

4 inevitably   

adv.不可避免地；必然发生地

参考例句：

• In the way you go on,you are inevitably coming apart.照你们这样下去，毫无疑问是会散伙的。
• Technological changes will inevitably lead to unemployment.技术变革必然会导致失业。

5 seedlings   

n.刚出芽的幼苗( seedling的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Ninety-five per cent of the new seedlings have survived. 新栽的树苗95%都已成活。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
• In such wet weather we must prevent the seedlings from rotting. 这样的阴雨天要防止烂秧。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

6 stashing   

v.贮藏( stash的现在分词 )；隐藏；藏匿；藏起

参考例句：

7 sprout   

n.芽，萌芽；vt.使发芽，摘去芽；vi.长芽，抽条

参考例句：

• When do deer first sprout horns?鹿在多大的时候开始长出角？
• It takes about a week for the seeds to sprout.这些种子大约要一周后才会发芽。

8 sage   

n.圣人，哲人；adj.贤明的，明智的

参考例句：

• I was grateful for the old man's sage advice.我很感激那位老人贤明的忠告。
• The sage is the instructor of a hundred ages.这位哲人是百代之师。

9 grouse   

n.松鸡；v.牢骚，诉苦

参考例句：

• They're shooting grouse up on the moors.他们在荒野射猎松鸡。
• If you don't agree with me,please forget my grouse.如果你的看法不同，请不必介意我的牢骚之言。

10 disturbance   

n.动乱，骚动；打扰，干扰；(身心)失调

参考例句：

• He is suffering an emotional disturbance.他的情绪受到了困扰。
• You can work in here without any disturbance.在这儿你可不受任何干扰地工作。

11 remarkably   

ad.不同寻常地，相当地

参考例句：

• I thought she was remarkably restrained in the circumstances. 我认为她在那种情况下非常克制。
• He made a remarkably swift recovery. 他康复得相当快。

12 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。

13 reverberate   

v.使回响，使反响

参考例句：

• The decision will reverberate and will jar the country.这项决定将引起反响并震撼这个国家。
• Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my hear.痛苦呼喊的一遍遍的在我的心中回响。