Colorado's water托福听力原文翻译及问题答案

Colorado's water托福听力原文翻译及问题答案

一、Colorado's water托福听力原文：

NARRATOR:Listen to part of a lecture in an environmental science class.MALE PROFESSOR:I'd like to continue with the topic of managing water resources,but I want to focus on a particular case.Uh,um,an example of water management that's made us reconsider the methods we use when we make these decisions.So let's look at what's happening in the Colorado River basin.The Colorado River basin is a region in the Southwest United States.Seven states rely on the Colorado's water.And as you can imagine,as the populations of these states began to grow,it became clear that a system to distribute,uh,to make sure each state got its fair share of water,some kind of system had to be created.And in 1922,a water-sharing agreement was made.Elizabeth,you have a question?FEMALE STUDENT:Well,how exactly do you figure out how to share a river?I mean,you can't,like,cut it up into pieces.MALE PROFESSOR:Well,let's start with the first step.And that's trying to figure out how much water on average flows through the river each year.Now,researchers had started gathering data on water flow back in the late 1890s using instruments they placed in the river.When the 1922 water-sharing agreement was made,there were about twenty years of data on water flow available.The average annual flow was calculated.And,well,the agreement was based on that calculation.The same basic agreement is in effect today.

FEMALE STUDENT:Wait!That was all the data they had?And they based their decision on that?MALE PROFESSOR:Yes.And we'll why that was a bad decision in a moment.OK.As decades passed,it became clear that measuring river flow was much more complicated than we had thought.See,a river has periods of low flow and periods of high flow.And this wasn't taken into consideration when the 1922 agreement was made.In the 1970s,the population of the area was rising while the amount of water flowing through the river seemed to be falling.By this time,we had—what—a hundred years of recorded data to look at?That's still a pretty short time for an ancient river.To get more data,we looked at a different source...a source that was able to tell us about hundreds of years of the river's history.Tree rings.OK.Let me explain.

You probably know that we can determine a tree's age by counting the rings on a cross section of its trunk.Each ring represents one year of the tree's life.So if you know the year the tree was cut,you can count inwards and date each ring all the way back to the center.You can also tell how much moisture the tree got during each of those years by looking at the width of the rings.A wide ring means plenty of water while a narrow one indicates less.Fortunately for us,certain areas of the Colorado River basin are home to some very old trees,some 800 years old and older.Researchers can drill core samples,uh,basically get a cross section of a tree without having to kill it,look at the rings and get a picture of what the climate was like in the basin for each of the tree's years.Well,the results tell us something we wouldn't have known without this data,that over the past 500 years or so,the Colorado River basin has experienced severe droughts,some worse than any we've ever recorded.They also showed that the early to mid-1900s,when most of the data that led to the water-sharing agreement was collected—well,this was the wettest period in the past 400 years.Well,obviously,had water management officials known then what we know now,the 1922 agreement would have been handled differently.

But today we can use the past to help prepare us for the future.With the demand for water in the basin stays increasing and with the real likelihood of lower flows in the river,if history is our teacher,we can develop innovative methods of water conservation and reevaluate how water is distributed.

二、Colorado's water托福听力中文翻译：

旁白：在环境科学课上听一部分讲座。男教授：我想继续讨论水资源管理的话题，但我想集中讨论一个特殊的案例。这是一个水资源管理的例子，它让我们在做出这些决定时重新考虑我们使用的方法。让我们看看科罗拉多河流域发生了什么。科罗拉多河流域是美国西南部的一个地区。七个州依靠科罗拉多州的水资源。你可以想象，随着这些州的人口开始增长，很明显，为了确保每个州都能获得公平的水资源，必须建立某种系统。1922年，双方达成了水资源共享协议。伊丽莎白，你有问题吗？女学生：那么，你到底是怎么知道如何共享一条河的呢？我是说，你不能把它切成碎片。男教授：好吧，让我们从第一步开始。这是为了计算每年平均有多少水流过这条河。现在，研究人员在19世纪90年代末开始使用他们放置在河里的仪器收集水流数据。1922年签订水资源共享协议时，已有大约20年的水流数据。计算了平均年流量。协议就是基于这个计算得出的。同样的基本协议今天生效。

女学生：等等！这就是他们所有的数据？他们的决定是基于这个吗？男教授：是的。我们会马上解释为什么这是一个糟糕的决定。好的，几十年过去了，很明显测量河流流量比我们想象的要复杂得多。看，河流有低流量和高流量两个时期。1922年协议签订时，这一点没有考虑在内。在20世纪70年代，该地区的人口在增加，而流经该河的水量似乎在下降。到这个时候，我们有什么-一百年的记录数据要看？对于一条古老的河流来说，这仍然是相当短的时间。为了获得更多的数据，我们研究了另一个来源…一个能够告诉我们这条河数百年历史的来源。树木年轮。好的，让我解释一下。

你可能知道，我们可以通过计算树干横截面上的年轮来确定一棵树的年龄。每个年轮代表树的一年寿命。因此，如果你知道这棵树被砍伐的年份，你可以向内数数，并将每个年轮的日期追溯到中心。你还可以通过观察年轮的宽度来判断树木在这些年中每年获得了多少水分。宽环表示水充足，窄环表示水不足。对我们来说幸运的是，科罗拉多河流域的某些地区是一些非常古老的树木的家园，大约有800多年的历史。研究人员可以钻取岩芯样本，呃，基本上不需要杀死一棵树就可以得到它的横截面，看看年轮，就能得到这棵树每一年盆地的气候状况。结果告诉我们，如果没有这些数据，我们是不会知道的，在过去500年左右的时间里，科罗拉多河流域经历了严重的干旱，比我们记录的任何一次都要严重。他们还表明，20世纪初至中期，导致水资源共享协议的大部分数据都收集得很好，这是过去400年来最潮湿的时期。很明显，如果当时的水管理官员知道我们现在知道的，1922年的协议会得到不同的处理。

但今天，我们可以利用过去帮助我们为未来做好准备。随着流域对水的需求持续增加，河流流量降低的可能性越来越大，如果历史是我们的老师，我们可以开发创新的节水方法，并重新评估水的分配方式。

三、Colorado's water托福听力问题：

Q1:1.What is the lecture mainly about?

A.The use of tree rings to measure water usage rates

B.Collecting data that are useful for planning water distribution

C.Investigating the history of water use in the Colorado River basin

D.The need for more government involvement in water distribution

Q2:2.What does the student find surprising about the 1922 water-sharing agreement?

A.It was based on only twenty years of data.

B.It was approved by all seven states in the region.

C.It was meant to remain in effect for more than 100 years.

D.It was based on data from outside the Colorado River basin.

Q3:3.According to the professor,what was the problem with the data recorded before the 1970s?

A.The data were recorded on old instruments.

B.The recorded data and human observation did not match.

C.There were gaps in the recorded data.

D.The data did not reflect the historical changes in the flow of the Colorado River.

Q4:4.What assumption did researchers use to draw conclusions about the Colorado River basin?

A.Ancient tree ring data can only be obtained from dead trees.

B.The climate in an area tends to remain constant over time.

C.Rainfall has a limited impact on water flowing in rivers.

D.Width of tree rings can correspond to the amount of moisture in an area.

Q5:5.What does the professor imply when he describes the early to mid-1900s as the wettest period for the Colorado River in 400 years?

A.The climate in the Colorado River basin will become wetter in the future.

B.The 1922 agreement was based on overestimated average river flows.

C.Water flowing in the Colorado River rises and falls at a predictable rate.

D.Human activity caused climate change in the Colorado River basin.

Q6:6.What is the professor’s attitude toward future water-management plans in the Colorado River basin?

A.He believes better methods for collecting data need to be developed.

B.He does not believe water management will be a concern in the immediate future.

C.He is optimistic that new data will lead to better planning.

D.He is not certain all scientists understand the current condition of the Colorado River.

四、Colorado's water托福听力答案：

A1:正确答案：B

A2:正确答案：A

A3:正确答案：D

A4:正确答案：D

A5:正确答案：B

A6:正确答案：C

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