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Read the texts, underline the relevant parts, paraphrase them and summarize both texts in 5-7 sentences
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| 1) The Great Barrier Reef is one of the world's natural wonders, covering an area larger than Italy and drawing nearly 2 million tourists every year to boat, swim, snorkel and dive amid its elaborate flora and fauna. It generates some $6 billion in revenue for Australia annually and provides employment to more than 50,000 people. It's also one of the planet's most fragile ecosystems, home to more than 11,000 species that live, if not necessarily in harmony, in a carefully orchestrated symbiotic balance. At the foundation of this giant ecological and commercial enterprise is one tiny marine organism: the coral. That foundation is no longer solid. Corals build colonies that secrete calcium carbonate to form ocean reefs. When they're healthy, coral reefs provide shelter and food for animals all along the food chain, including the top: us. Across the planet, half a billion people rely, directly and indirectly, on corals for their living. That's why what happens to the 9,000-year-old Great Barrier Reef, as well as to other reefs worldwide, is critical. The recent Queensland floods were most notably tragic for the lives lost and property destroyed. But they have also hurt the Great Barrier Reef by funneling into the ocean vast plumes of freshwater and agricultural runoff that could severely damage the coral. Besides the extreme rain that sparked the floods, rising ocean temperatures, changes to the ocean's chemistry and the global trade in natural resources — all symptoms of our fossil-fuel economy — are waging a multifront war on the marine environment. | 2) Anybody who has been visiting coral reefs for the past 20 years or so will tell you that the scene underwater pales – quite literally – in comparison to what it used to be. New research published in PLoS ONE yesterday shows that coral bleaching in the Atlantic and the Caribbean in 2005 was the worst bleaching event ever recorded in the region. That year, more than 80% of the corals studied by researchers from 22 countries bleached, and 40% of it died. For us, coral reefs, by NOAA's estimates, generate up to $375 billion every year in jobs, food and tourism. Bleaching has been on coral watchers' radars since 1998, when the world's worst recorded incident of global bleaching occurred and 16% of the world's reefs died. This year things are looking grim too. While the majority of corals recover from bleaching, re-integrating algae once water temperatures cool down, repeated occurrences of periods of stress could affect the animals' ability to recover. What can we do to ensure that reefs aren't wiped in a matter of decades? Well, getting a greener energy economy online as fast as possible to curb the trend of rising ocean temperatures is the long answer. The short answer probably lies in mandating that the sectors that profit directly from coral reefs — primarily fishing and tourism — get more involved. There are a couple of very cool programs like Reef Check and CoralWatch that train tourists how to visually monitor coral reef health and report their findings back to the organizations. |
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Дата публикования: 2015-03-29; Прочитано: 344 | Нарушение авторского права страницы | Мы поможем в написании вашей работы!
