In an area that’s surrounded by Scotland’s coal mining past and its industrial present, there’s a transformation happening beneath our feet. Just three years ago this area was re-engineered to bring the coastal wetland back to its natural state.
Allison Leonard, Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, “We tear down the coastal defenses and let the water back in. But within a year or two we were seeing saltmarsh plants reappear. And we’re now three years down the line and you know, it’s all saltmarsh. And at that point we kind of just stepped back and let nature do its thing, and we’re really seeing the wildlife respond. So birds are using it at high tide and we see lots of deer, hares in the spring.”
As well as a diverse wetland habitat, this marsh has become a natural tool in our fight to reduce emissions of greenhouse gas into the atmosphere. Marshland plants absorb one of those key planet-warming gases, carbon dioxide, which then becomes buried in the mud. Lucy Miller, Research technician, University of St Andrews, said “This is some of the most organic-rich soils we find in the UK, compared to agricultural land, forest, forestry land. So we’ll wrap this up in cling film and then just to keep it, hold its shape and then we take it back to the University of St Andrews. We have a laboratory there. We will just perform a couple of experiments using a couple of different machines to measure the different layers, different levels of carbon within the layers of the core here.”
Allowing the sea to reclaim this stretch of land has provided a glimpse of how we can help nature to help us deal with the climate crisis.
【小题1】What do the underlined words “a transformation” refer to?| A．The reappearance of saltmarsh. | B．The recovery of the coastal wetland. |
| C．The bigger emissions of greenhouse gas. | D．The fiercer climate crisis. |
| A．Marshland plants take in harmful gases. | B．Researchers have handled water pollution. |
| C．The air quality will be improved. | D．The marsh makes a pollution-free environment. |
| A．To measure levels of carbon in each layer. | B．To get the data of different levels of soils. |
| C．To check the quality of different soils. | D．To compare different soils. |
| A．The industrial transformation. | B．The solution to the climate crisis. |
| C．The coastal wetland back to its natural state. | D．The fight to reduce emissions of greenhouse gas. |
