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  3. Given that 8 percent of food crops grows faster on farms using groundwa

Given that 8 percent of food crops grows faster on farms using groundwa

游客2024-01-11  30
问题          Given that 8 percent of food crops grows faster on farms using groundwater
     than the aquifers are replenished, and many large rivers are so heavily diverted
     that they do not reach the sea for much of the year, researchers believe
     freshwater sources--underground aquifers and rivers--are stressed.  Better
(5)   management of soil and water and creative cropping patterns can boost
     production from rainfall-watered cropland, but the heaviest burden will fall on
     irrigated land. At present, most farmers irrigate their crops by channeling
     water down their fields in parallel furrows.
         One alternative, drip systems, enables farmers to deliver water directly to
(10)  the plants’ roots drop by drop, nearly eliminating waste by distributing water at
     low pressure through a network of perforated plastic tubing installed on or
     below the surface of the soil, where it then emerges through small holes at a
     slow but steady pace. Because the plants enjoy an ideal moisture environment,
     drip irrigation usually offers the added bonus of higher crop yields. Another
(15)  alternative, sprinklers, can perform almost as well as drip methods when
     designed properly, but traditional high-pressure irrigation sprinklers spray
     water high into the air to cover as large a land area as possible, and the more
     time the water spends in the air, the more of it evaporates before use.
         Despite the payoffs, the higher costs of these technologies relative to
(20)  simple flooding methods have been a barrier to their spread, and so has the
     prevalence of national water policies that discourage rather than foster efficient
     water use. Many governments have set very low prices for publicly supplied
     irrigation, leaving farmers with little motivation to invest in ways to conserve
     water or to improve efficiency and most authorities have also failed to regulate
(25)  groundwater pumping,  even in regions where aquifers are over-tapped.
     Therefore, farmers might be inclined to conserve their own water supplies if
     they could profit from selling the surplus, but this practice is often discouraged.
         Efforts aside from irrigation technologies are also conducive to the
     reduction of agricultural demand for water; for instance, measurements of
(30)  climate factors such as temperature and precipitation can be fed into a computer
     that calculates how much water a typical plant is consuming, and farmers can
     use this figure to determine, quite accurately, when and how much to irrigate
     their particular crops throughout the growing season. But the most effective, if
     unlikely way, to do more with less water is to reconfigure our diets, especially
(35)  the typical North American diet, which, with its large share of animal products,
     requires twice as much water as diets common in many Asian and some
     European countries. Eating lower on the food chain could allow the same
     volume of water to feed two Americans instead of one, and despite the resultant
     loss of nutrition, this may be the only recourse for countries serious about
(40)  reducing their aquifer strain.
选项 A、expose the fragile ecological conditions which modern irrigation technologies must ameliorate
B、argue that new irrigation technologies would ultimately be less efficient than a reconfiguration of the North American diet
C、argue that efficient water-use is dependent upon a mixture of various modern methods
D、provide an overall view of possible methods for lessening the strain on sources of freshwater
E、describe the cycle by which aquifers are depleted and then replenished through technology
答案 D
解析
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