Деловой иностранный язык (английский). Учебное пособие по направлению подготовки 20.04.02 Природообустройство и водопользование, магистерская программ

4.Describe the global situation with forest resources. What are the prospects?

5.Translate the text

The Wood Fund of the Russian Federation

Russia possesses about 1/5 of all global wood resources, i.e. the largest stock of wood in the world. Boreal woods of the temperate zone are almost exclusive property of Russia (2/3 of the global stock).

Forestries of the USA and Canada taken separately from about one tenth of global volume. Brazil has a little more of woods. China and India together have one twentieth of global wood resources. There is less than 1 hectare of wood per man (the global rate). The same rate for Canada is more than 8, in Finland - 4, in Russia - 5.3; and in the USA - only 0.8 hectare. Standing wood resources correspondingly have 65 cubic metres per man (the global level), in Canada - more than 570, in Russia - 561, in Finland - above 370 and in the USA - only about 83 cubic metres.

The wood fund of the Russian Federation is spread for many thousand kilometres from pine woods of Kurshskaya Spit (the Baltic coast) to birch forests of Kamchatka and fir groves of Northern Sakhalin, from poor dwarf vegetation of pre-arctic territories of the Kola Peninsula to the richest in species woods of the Black Sea Coast. On the whole it occupies 69% of land. Percentage of wood territories to the whole territory of Russia (including all its water basins) is 45.3%.

According to economic, ecological and social role all wood resources of Russia may be subdivided into 3 groups:

1.Group - water-protective, soil-protective, reserved and other woods where felling is forbidden, i.e.: forest belts, reserves, forest parks, suburban and resort zones (total area - 268.7 million hectares);

2.Group - multi-purpose woods in forest-poor zones with limited exploitation of woodlands (total area - 88.7 million hectares);

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3. Group - widely exploited woods of forest-rich zones where the most part of afforestation are reproduced with participation of man (total area - 815.0 million hectares).

Thus, the woods of I group make 22.9 of the national wood fund, II group - 7.6%, III - 69.5%.

The wood fund strueturc has been changing during last twenty years. The shape of III group woods has decreased very noticeably, mainly due to increase of area of I and partly II groups. It testifies to the growing ecological and social role of woods.

Vocabulary

boreal - северный temperate - умеренный

forestry - 1) лесоводство, лесное хозяйство; 2) леса, лесные массивы pine - сосна

birch - берёза fir - пихта dwarf - карлик

forbid - запрещать

afforestation - лесонасаждение, облесение participation - участие

testify to smth - свидетельствовать о чем-либо

6. Answer the questions on the text

1.What figures prove that Russia is the largest wood country?

2.What types of forests can be found in Russia?

3.What groups may all wood resources of Russia be subdivided into?

4.How has the wood fund structure been changing during last twenty

years?

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7. Translate the sentences into English:

1.Леса северных территорий и зоны умеренного климата являются исключительной собственностью России и составляют 2/3 мировых запасов.

2.Лесные массивы простираются на тысячи километров от сосновых лесов Куршской косы до берёзовых лесов Камчатки и пихтовых рощ Северного Сахалина.

3.По экономической, экологической и социальной роли все лесные ресурсы России могут быть подразделены на три группы.

4.Изменения в структуре лесных ресурсов за последние 20 лет свидетельствуют об их растущей экологической и социальной роли.

Climate Change and Human Activity

1. Translate the text

The World’s Inconstant Climate

The world's climate is not and never has been constant. Climate, the longterm behavior of weather, is inherently changeable. Not only are there gross changes over geological time scales (ice ages and inter-glacial warm periods) but smaller changes on much shorter time scales occur, too. Temperatures in Europe during the mediaeval warm period were on average 0.5°C warmer than they arc now. But just two hundred years later it was a different story. The sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were up to 1° cooler than today's average temperatures. This was the time of the so-called "Little Ice Age".

Recent climatic changes have been less marked than our changes in mental attitude, and our perception of the weather. During the 1980s there has been increasing concern that the weather has become more extreme, that the climate is changing for the worse, and that it's Man's fault. This may be true, but there is no evidence to show that freak events are likely to become more frequent. It's

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unlikely, for example, that major floods are occurring with any greater frequency than they have in the past, but modern reporting ensures that greater numbers of people are rapidly informed about such disasters. While freak weather is nothing new, it is a good talking-point when it does occur.

The 1780s experienced a historically interesting pattern of climatic variations which in some ways echo the changes now in evidence. Several extremes in temperature and rainfall during that decade resulted in extreme variability of the weather from year to year and season to season. Complaints about sunless summers, prolonged winters, droughts and unseasonal frosts were the order of the day. Europe was experiencing the tailend of the Little Ice Age, and beginning to warm out of this cold period. But increased volcanic activity in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries produced dust veils in the upper atmosphere which may have prolonged the cold spell. The two conflicting influences were possibly the cause of the extreme variability.

Although the dust veils probably had an overall effect of keeping global temperatures down by partially blocking and scattering the Sun's rays, it is not believed that volcanic activity was responsible for the climatic change which caused the Little lee Age in the first place. Some scicntists believe that the Little Ice Age could have been the result of changing solar output rather than dust in the atmosphere. The suns output probably varies by about 0.1% during the eleven-year solar cycle, and this fact has recently been related to sunspot activity; the fewer the sunspots, the less the Sun's output. There were very few sunspots during the seventeenth century, so this is the most likely cause for the cool period.

The next Ice Age is still in the distant future, and our present concern is for the climate during the coming hundreds, rather than thousands, of years. But human concern is unavoidable. If the current global warming trend continues, and if it is due to Man's activities, we could be creating major problems for our

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children. Climatic change is a natural phenomenon, but Man's excessive burning of fossil fuels may have begun to create climatic changes of a magnitude unprecedented in human history.

Vocabulary

inherent - 1) присущий, неотъемлемый; 2) прирожденный, свойственный mediaeval - средневековый

perception - восприятие, ощущение freak - необычный, странный

in evidence — заметный, бросающийся в глаза spell - зд. короткий промежуток времени

veil - завеса, пелена sunspot - пятно на Солнце

2.Answer the questions on the text

1.What events in the long-term weather behavior show that climate is inherently changeable?

2.What was Europe experiencing in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries?

3.How do sunspots and solar output influence the climate?

4.Why is human concern about climate change unavoidable?

5.What causes climate changes?

3.Translate the sentences into English

1.Температуры в Европе в средневековый тёплый период были в среднем на 0,5°С выше, чем теперь.

2.В 1980-е гг. нарастало беспокойство, связанное с тем, что погода становится все более экстремальной, климат изменяется в худшую сторону из-за деятельности человека.

3.Активизация вулканической деятельности в конце XVIII - начале

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XIX веков стала причиной скопления вулканического пепла в верхних слоях атмосферы, что могло вызвать продолжение холодного периода.

4. Изменение климата — это естественное явление, но чрезмерное сжигание человеком ископаемых горючих материалов может способствовать началу таких климатических изменений, которые окажутся беспрецедентными в истории человечества

4. Try to explain why the climate changes.

Greenhouse Effect

The energy, which drives our weather and climate, comes from the Sun. The Earth receives energy, largely in the form that we see as visible light. The atmospheric gases and others do not absorb light in the visible region. Therefore, the visible light from the Sun passes through the atmosphere to warm the earth. In turn the warm earth radiates this energy back toward space as infrared radiation. But, on the way, some of it is absorbed by gases in the atmosphere, which are strong absorbers of infrared waves, they reradiate some of this energy back toward the earth.

Thus, these gases act as an insulating blanket keeping the earth much warmer than it would be without them. If these gases were not present, all of the heat the earth radiates would be lost into space. This is similar to the effect of glass in a greenhouse, which allows the sunlight in but keeps some of the radiated heat from escaping. Hence the gases in the atmosphere, which absorb radiated heat, are called the greenhouse gases, and the process is known as greenhouse effect.

Greenhouse gases occur naturally in the atmosphere. The natural greenhouse effect keeps the temperature of the Earth some 30°C warmer than it would be otherwise. Without it the Earth would be too cold to support life, the oceans would freeze. Water vapor is the most important natural greenhouse gas. Its concentration in the atmosphere depends on the Earth's temperature. The

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concentration of other natural greenhouse gases is determined by the balance between the processes, which produce them ('sources') and those, which absorb them ('sinks'). The main natural greenhouse gases are:

-carbon dioxide (CO2), which is released when living things breathe, die and decay, and which is absorbed by plants and the animals that feed on them;

-methane (CH2), which is produced when organic material decays in the absence of air, as in marshes and wetlands, and by digestion in the stomachs of cattle and sheep, and is destroyed by chemical reactions in the atmosphere;

nitrous oxide (N20), which is given off by vegetation and soils, and eventually breaks down chemically in the stratosphere; - ozone (O3), which is generated by the sun's rays in the stratosphere, and by chemical reactions in the lower atmosphere, and destroyed by other natural chemical reactions.

Vocabulary

greenhouse - теплица, оранжерея infrared - инфракрасный insulating – изолирующий escape - уходить, улетучиваться hence - следовательно

vapor - пар; пары; испарения decay - гнить, разлагаться marsh - болото, топь

5.Answer the questions on the text

1.What is the energy source which drivers our weather and climate?

2.How does greenhouse effect work?

3.What gases in the atmosphere are called the greenhouse gases?

4.What would happen if the natural greenhouse effect did not keep the temperature of the Earth some 30°C warner?

5.What are the main natural greenhouse gases?

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6.Give the Russian equivalents to the following word combinations greenhouse effect infrared

radiation insulating blanket to absorb radiated heat to decay in the absence of air natural chemical reactions lower atmosphere natural greenhouse gases

7.Translate the sentences into English

1.Часть отражаемой Землёй солнечной радиации задерживается в атмосфере газами-поглотителями инфракрасного излучения и отражается по направлению к Земле.

2.Если бы этих газов не было в атмосфере, то всё тепло, отражаемое Землёй, уходило бы в открытое пространство.

3.Благодаря естественному парниковому эффекту, на Земле со-

храняется температура на 30°С выше, чем могла бы быть при его от-

сутствии.

4.Углекислый газ выделяется при дыхании, в результате разложения органических веществ и поглощается растениями и питающимися ими животными.

5.Метан образуется при разложении органических веществ в условиях отсутствия воздуха (болото, сильно увлажнённые территории), а

также в результате процесса переваривания в желудках домашних животных.

8. Annotate the text

Global Warming

An increase in the greenhouse effect may lead to global warming,

disastrous change in the climate. Using the computer models on which sci-

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entists base their predictions of climate change, Greenpeace estimates that no more than 225 billion tons of carbon can be burned if global warming is to be limited to the increase of one degree centigrade. The United Nations Advisory group on Greenhouse gases concluded that temperature increases beyond 1°C may cause extensive ecological damage. The total amount of fossil fuels currently due to be expected is 1000 billion tons, which if burnt would result in unacceptable temperature rise. Global warming threats all of us with future droughts, foods and crop losses, that have the potential for massive human miseries. Changes in climate could dramatically decrease rain falling over enormous areas, turning more the land into desert. For example, Central Africa, South Asia, some part of the US might face the danger of drought and famine. In other places, over the oceans and in coastal zones, more rain might fall, and more storms, floods, hurricanes, typhoons, mudflows and slides might occur. Moreover, a rise in the earth's average temperature of only one or two degrees would probably cause a large amount of ice at the North Pole and South Pole (the polar ice caps) to melt and raise sea levels.

The Antarctic ice-cap contains 90 per cent of the world's fresh water. If it melted completely, it would raise the sea level by more than 70 meters, many densely populated areas would be flooded. Many of the world major population centers situated on the coast could stop their existence and disappear under water. About one billion people would lose their homes and become environmental refugees. At present the fastest temperature rise is observed in the Antarctic Peninsula, during the past 50 years the Antarctic was warmed by 2.5 degrees centigrade. The increase in temperature affects badly life of penguins, the inhabitants of the Antarctic. The warmer weather has made it more difficult for penguins to bring up young, as they nest in high rocks that do not trap snow' or water because of yearly meltdown. There is also less krill plankton to eat. This led to a dramatic decline in their population.

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The reducing of ice covering on North Pole by 40% and appearance of water on North Pole for the first time in 50 million years have given convincing evidence of global warming. American researchers during their recent expedition to the Pole have observed a patch of open water (polynia) in the ice covering about 1 km in width.

Vocabulary

disastrous - гибельный; катастрофический prediction - предсказание

unacceptable - неприемлемый miseries - невзгоды, несчастья famine - голод

refugee - беженец

trap - 1) западня, ловушка; 2) улавливать, 3) поглощать patch - зд. пятно

centigrade (thermometer) - термометр Цельсия, термометр со стоградусной шкалой

9. Answer the questions on the text:

1.What process may lead to global warming?

2.What ecological damage may global warming cause?

3.What would happen if the Antarctic ice-cap melted completely?

4.How does the increase in temperature affect life of penguins?

5.Why to the researchers examine the reducing of ice covering on North

Pole?

10. Translate the sentences into English:

1. Консультативная группа при ООН по парниковым газам пришла к выводу о том, что рост температуры более чем на 1°С может стать причиной масштабности экологической катастрофы.

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