nowhere是什么意思啊-杜撰的意思
On Fire
As I mentioned last week, I’ve
recently returned from Australia. While I
was
there, I visited a eucalyptus forest that, in
February, was the scene of
an appalling
wildfire. Perhaps naively, I had expected to find
that many
trees had been killed. They hadn’t.
They had blackened bark, but were
otherwise
looking rather well, many of them wreathed in new
young
leaves. This prompted me to consider
fire and the role it plays as a force
of
nature.
Fossil charcoals tell us that
wildfires have been part of life on Earth for as
long as there have been plants on land. That’s
more than 400 million
years of fire. Fire was
here long before arriviste plants like grasses; it
pre-dated the first flowers. And without
wanting to get mystical about it,
fire is, in
many respects, a kind of animal, albeit an
ethereal one. Like any
animal, it consumes
oxygen. Like a sheep or a slug, it eats plants.
But
unlike a normal animal, it’s a shape-
shifter. Sometimes, it merely nibbles
a few
leaves; sometimes it kills grown trees. Sometimes
it is more deadly
and destructive than a swarm
of locusts.
The shape-shifting nature of fire
makes it hard to study, for it is not a
single
entity. Some fires are infernally hot; others,
relatively cool. Some
stay at ground level;
others climb trees. Moreover, fire is much more
likely to appear in some parts of the world
than in others. Satellite images
of the
Earth show that wildfires are rare in, say,
northern Europe, and
common in parts of
central Africa and Australia. (These days many
wildfires are started by humans, either on
purpose or by accident. But
long before our
ancestors began to throw torches or cigarette
butts, fires
were started by lightning
strikes, or by sparks given off when rocks rub
together in an avalanche.)
Once a
fire gets started, many factors contribute to how
it will behave.
The weather obviously has a
huge effect: winds can fan flames, rains can
quench them. The lie of the land matters, too:
fire runs uphill more
readily than it goes
down. But another crucial factor is what type of
plants
the fire has to eat.
It’s common
knowledge that plants regularly exposed to fire
tend to have
features that help them cope with
it — such as thick bark, or seeds that
only
grow after being exposed to intense heat or smoke.
But what is less
often remarked on is that the
plants themselves affect the nature and
severity of fire.
The shape-shifting
nature of fire makes it hard to study, for it is
not a
single entity. Some fires are infernally
hot; others, relatively cool. Some
stay at
ground level; others climb trees. Moreover, fire
is much more
likely to appear in some parts of
the world than in others. Satellite images
of
the Earth show that wildfires are rare in, say,
northern Europe, and
common in parts of
central Africa and Australia. (These days many
wildfires are started by humans, either on
purpose or by accident. But
long before our
ancestors began to throw torches or cigarette
butts, fires
were started by lightning
strikes, or by sparks given off when rocks rub
together in an avalanche.)
Once a
fire gets started, many factors contribute to how
it will behave.
The weather obviously has a
huge effect: winds can fan flames, rains can
quench them. The lie of the land matters, too:
fire runs uphill more
readily than it goes
down. But another crucial factor is what type of
plants
the fire has to eat.
It’s common
knowledge that plants regularly exposed to fire
tend to have
features that help them cope with
it — such as thick bark, or seeds that
only
grow after being exposed to intense heat or smoke.
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