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The real secret, though, is what you can't observe.
但真正的秘密卻是你無法用眼直接觀察到的。
The soil in the Cerrado runs deep, in places 80 feet, and to help survive the dry season and its fires, many plants sprout extensive root systems.
塞拉多的土壤層非常深，有些地方達到24米，許多植物為了在旱季和野火中保命而生出了廣大的根系。
The vast majority of the Cerrado's biomass is subterranean. Some trees that look like spindly fence posts aboveground are muscle-rooted and brawny below.
所以塞拉多生物量的大頭藏在地面之下。有些矮樹表面長得像細弱的籬笆桿，土里的部分卻雄偉而強健。
Biologists who examine this hidden realm call the Cerrado the upside-down forest.
研究其地下領域的生物學家把塞拉多稱為“上下顛倒的森林”。
This underground world performs priceless ecological services.
而土壤內這部分的生態作用是無價之寶。
It's a massive carbon sink, locking away billions of tons of carbon dioxide in well-buried roots.
首先它是巨大規模的碳匯，以深埋的根部鎖住數十億噸二氧化碳。
As the Cerrado is converted to farmland -- the current rate is more than 4,000 acres a day -- the greenhouse gas is released.
隨著塞拉多荒野被改造成農田--當前速度是每天1600公頃以上，封鎖在地下的溫室氣體釋放出來。
Each year, according to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), the discharge due to altering the Cerrado is equivalent to the annual emissions of 50 million cars.
世界自然基金會（WWF）估計因改造塞拉多地貌增加的排放量相當于5000萬輛汽車。
If all the carbon held by the Cerrado were discharged, this might single-handedly push global warming over the 1.5-degree Celsius limit set by the United Nations at the Paris climate conference of 2015, a point at which the global ice sheets could inexorably melt, causing the seas to inundate every coastal city.
如果塞拉多的碳匯全部排出，也許就能憑此一地之力把全球變暖推上聯合國在2015年巴黎氣候變化大會設定的1.5攝氏度極限，令全球冰蓋不可逆融化，所有沿海城市被海水淹沒。
Deep soil is also a sponge. The Cerrado collects and stores seasonal rains in immense subterranean chambers. The more land that's cut above, the less water held below.
深層土壤也是一種吸水材料，塞拉多有多處巨大的地下空穴能收集和儲存季節性雨水。地表土層被削掉的越多，下方蓄水量就越少。
These aquifers, geologists report, feed the headwaters of eight of the 12 major river basins in South America.
地質學家指出，這些含水層滋養著南美洲12個大河流域中的8個源頭。
The Cerrado's underground tanks pump water all over the continent. If the Amazon is the lungs, the Cerrado is the heart.
其地下水最終漫灌到整片大陸。如果亞馬孫雨林是地球之肺，塞拉多就是心臟。
To get to a place where the Cerrado's pulse can be experienced untamed and raw, take the road north out of Brasília.
要想感受塞拉多的野性脈搏，請從巴西利亞向北走。
It first runs arrow straight through the suburbs, then direct to the factory farms.
公路先是筆直穿過城郊，接著射向工業化農場。
Rows of soybeans roll to the horizons; grain trucks outnumber cars. Tractors spray the fields with white mist.
路上，一排排大豆秧滾向地平線，運糧卡車多過小汽車。拖拉機對田地噴著白霧。
More than 150 million gallons of pesticides, Brazilian environmental journalists report, douse the Cerrado each year.
據巴西環境問題記者報道，每年約有6億升殺蟲劑灑入塞拉多。
"The land has been decimated," says Brazilian ecologist Paulo Oliveira, editor of The Cerrados of Brazil, a book that explores the natural history of the region.
“土地元氣大傷。”巴西生態學家保羅·奧利韋拉說，他曾作為編輯參與制作一本自然史類圖書《巴西塞拉多》。
And soybeans, for the most part, aren't eaten by people -- they're shipped around the globe to feed cattle. The world demands beef.
而這里種的大豆多半不是供人食用，而是運往世界各地喂牛。世界需要牛肉。
After a couple of hours of driving, the windshield spattered with bugs, hills rise up, the giant farms dissipate, and the Cerrado exists in a natural state.
驅車幾小時后，擋風玻璃上黏滿撞碎的昆蟲殘軀，山丘聳起，大型農場變得稀落，塞拉多現出自然狀態下的面目。
The terrain, admittedly, can appear weird. Soil toxicity meddles with tree growth, making the trunks all gnarled and hunched.
應當承認這面目是有些古怪之處的。土壤的毒性壓抑著樹木長勢，使樹干生得彎扭多節。
The frequent fires scorch the buds at the ends of branches, which are replaced by lower buds that grow at contorted angles, then those eventually get fire-burned too, and so on. It's basically a big thicket of elbows.
頻發的野火燒焦枝條末端的新芽，比較靠后的樹芽會補上，但長起來就是歪歪扭扭的，這些歪著長的枝干終究也會遭火燒，如此反復，樹就長得好像全身都是胳膊肘。
Though not every Cerrado landscape looks Dr. Seuss strange.
但塞拉多并非每處風景都像“蘇斯博士”筆下的畫面般古怪。
The Cerrado is one huge, interconnected biome composed of a dozen varieties of smaller ecosystems, ranging from open grassland to dense, full-size woods.
它是由十多個小生態系統互連而成的生物大群落，其中既有開闊草原也有成規模的茂密林區。
Driving deeper in, some 150 miles from Brasília, travelers approach Chapada dos Veadeiros, one of the national parks in the Cerrado, where sections of closed-canopy forest shroud tumbling rivers.
驅車繼續深入，走到離巴西利亞約2150英里的地方，就到了沙帕達-杜斯維阿迪羅斯附近，這是塞拉多地區的兩座國家公園之一，密如屏障的樹冠間藏著奔騰的河流。
There's a tourist town here, Alto Paraíso -- High Paradise -- where a steady stream of visitors, primarily from other parts of Brazil, hire certified hiking guides, lounge in streams, and purchase genuine Cerrado crystals, from pendant-necklace size to paperweight, dug from the ancient soil and perfect, say the shopkeepers, for cleansing your aura.
這里還有個旅游小鎮阿爾圖帕拉伊蘇--名字意為“高處的樂園”，享有穩定的客流，顧客主要來自國內其他地區，到這里雇向導徒步，溯溪消閑，買古老土壤中出產的正宗塞拉多水晶，小塊的做吊墜，大塊的當鎮紙，還附帶店鋪老板聲稱的完美“凈化能量”。
