Moreover, seaweed farms bring benefits beyond the immediate value of their crop.
此外,海草養殖場帶來的效益超出了其作物的直接價值。
Seaweed is a habitat for many marine creatures, including fish.
海草是包括魚類在內的許多海洋生物的棲息地。
Some of these can be harvested for food.
其中一些可以作為人類的食物。
Indeed, for artificial upwelling to bring about that desirable state of affairs it may not even be necessary to farm seaweed.
事實上,人工上涌要想達到這種理想狀態,甚至都不需要養殖海草。
Ocean artUp, a project led by the Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research in Kiel, Germany, is experimenting with the use of upwelling to encourage the growth of the small, planktonic creatures eaten by sardines.
由德國基爾亥姆霍茲海洋研究中心領導的“海洋藝術行動”項目,正在試驗利用上升洋流來促進被沙丁魚吃掉的小型浮游生物的生長。
That could help restore stocks of these fish, which are shrinking rapidly in both the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea.
這可能有助于恢復這些魚類的數量,大西洋和地中海地區的這些魚類都在迅速減少。
Ocean artUp, which began in 2017 and is scheduled to run until the end of this year, has concentrated on simulating and measuring exactly how artificial upwelling affects the quantities of nutrients transferred between ocean layers.
“海洋藝術行動”于2017年啟動,預計將持續到今年年底,主要致力于模擬和準確測量人工上涌如何影響海洋層間營養物轉移的數量。
One thing the project’s researchers have discovered is that if you pump too hard, some of the upwelled water simply drops back into the depths, without mixing properly.
該項目的研究人員發現的一件事是,如果泵壓過高,一些上涌的海水還沒來得及與表層海水融合就會回落至海洋深處。
Stirring the ocean in this way may thus require the design of floating water-mixers, too, to keep the nutrients at the surface.
用這種方式攪動海洋可能還需要設計一個漂浮的海水混合器,確保營養物質能停留在海面上。
Meanwhile, in San Francisco, Otherlab, an independent research laboratory, is working on an underwater robot intended to screw large tethers firmly into the seabed, to ensure that floating seaweed farms stay put, and can better survive stormy weather.
與此同時,在舊金山,一家名為Otherlab的獨立研究實驗室正在研究一種水下機器人,它可以將大纜繩牢牢地固定在海床上,以確保漂浮的海藻養殖場留在原地,并且對暴風雨天氣的承受能力更強。
Otherlab is part of a consortium paid for by ARPA-e, an American-government agency that is exploring the idea of using seaweed as a source of biofuel.
Otherlab是美國政府機構ARPA-e資助的一個財團的一部分,該財團正在探索將海藻當做生物燃料這個想法。
Those squeamish about anything that smacks of geoengineering—in other words, technology intended to change the world’s climate in ways that oppose global warming—view artificial upwelling with scepticism.
那些對任何帶有地質工程色彩的東西——換句話說,就是以反對全球變暖的方式來改變世界氣候的技術——過于拘謹的人,都對人工上涌持懷疑態度。
They argue that it could damage other parts of ocean ecosystems, and might even create unwanted side-effects that end up accelerating climate change rather than slowing it.
他們認為,這可能會破壞海洋生態系統的其他部分,甚至可能產生不必要的副作用,最終加速而不是減緩氣候變化。
Proponents, conversely, see these early efforts, at least, as simply restoring upwelling that has been suppressed by climate change.
相反,支持者認為這些早期的努力,至少只是簡單地恢復了被氣候變化抑制的海水上涌。
A study published last year in Nature Climate Change, by a team of researchers from America and China, suggested that the overall stratification of the world’s oceans has increased by 5% since 1960, with up to 20% more stratification in the tropics.
去年發表在《自然氣候變化》雜志上的一項研究表明,自1960年以來,世界海洋的整體分層增加了5%,熱帶地區的分層增加了20%。
This is despite any countervailing effect of the more extreme weather that global warming brings, which leads to greater churning of the oceans.
盡管全球變暖帶來了更極端的天氣,導致了海洋更劇烈的攪動,但仍有抵消作用。
Any such churning is overwhelmed by the extra buoyancy of the warmer surface layers.
海洋的任何攪動都被表層海水所增加的浮力給掩蓋了。
Cooling the ocean surface by encouraging upwelling might also have a direct effect on the local air temperature.
促進海水上涌來冷卻海洋表面也可能對當地氣溫產生直接影響。
Warmer surface waters keep the atmosphere above warmer, too. Cooler waters do the reverse.
溫暖的水面上方的大氣也會更加溫暖。較涼的水則相反。
But the technology would have to be deployed on a vast scale—over millions of hectares of the ocean’s surface—before it had a noticeable effect on the atmosphere.
但這項技術必須大規模應用——在數百萬公頃的海洋表面,才能對大氣產生顯著影響。
As Dr von Herzen, who does not advocate geoengineering, points out, any such plans would face more than just economic barriers.
正如不提倡地質工程的馮·赫爾岑博士所指出的那樣,任何類似的計劃面臨的都不僅僅是經濟障礙。
The London Protocol, an international legal framework that regulates marine pollution, sets stringent limits on deliberate geoengineering of the oceans.
《倫敦公約議定書》是一個管理海洋污染的國際法律框架,對蓄意進行海洋地質工程設定了嚴格的限制。
The protocol does, however, tolerate justifiable commercial exploitation, along with some carbon capture.
然而,該協議確實允許合理的商業開發,以及一些碳捕獲。
If large-scale seaweed farming were, nevertheless, to be considered for geoengineering, there would be a certain irony in that fact.
然而,如果大規模海草養殖被看成地質工程,那么這一事實將具有一定的諷刺意味。
To do this would mean dumping the algae thus grown on the ocean floor, to stop the carbon in them returning to the atmosphere.
要做到這一點,就意味著將通過這種方法生長的藻類傾倒在海底,以阻止它們中所含的碳返回到大氣中。
That would probably work in the short term.
這在短期內可能行得通。
But it was just such a process of sedimentation of organic matter which, over millions of years, produced modern-day petroleum fields.
但正是這樣一個有機物質的沉積過程,在數百萬年的時間里,產生了現代的油田。
And it is their oil, furiously pumped up for over a century, that has generated much of the excess of greenhouse gases of which the world is now trying to rid itself.
而且,正是它們所產生的石油,在一個多世紀里被瘋狂地開采,產生了大量過剩的溫室氣體,而世界現在正試圖擺脫這些氣體。
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