咸海的回归（三）

不仅是海水在干枯, 它正在变得无比的咸。像犹他州的大盐湖一样, 咸海没有自然形成的出口，随着时间的推移，在河底沉淀物中积聚了盐。由于较少有水流入, 碱化过程加速了。到了1980 年末。10,424 平方米的海底变成了沙漠，分层堆积起毒性盐。水含盐量从1950年海水健康时的每公升10克上升了1990 年的大约每公升26 克。(如果到了每公升35克, 它会像海洋的海水一样咸。) 所有23 个种类的鱼消失了。“海水还没到盐浆糊的程度, 但什么也不能在它里面生存了，”世界银行的阿曼特. 马苏特说， 他是在卡扎克斯坦的大型项目的项目负责人。“没有生物可能在那里生存。”

Not only was the sea drying up, it was growing lethally salty. Like the Great Salt Lake in Utah, the Aral Sea has no naturally occurring outlets and over time collects salt from river deposits. With less water flowing in, the process accelerated. By the late 1980s. 10,424 square likes of sealfoor had become desert and was layered with toxic salts. Water salinity had risen from 10 grams per liter in the 1950s, when the sea was healthy, to about 26 grams per liter in 1990. (At 35 grams per grams per liter, it would be as salty as the ocean.) All 23 species of fish disappeared. The water “wasn’t quite salt paste yet, but nothing could survive in it,” says Masood Ahmad of the World Bank, who was project leader for the massive undertaking in Kazakhstan. “No biological life was possible.”

在整个区域里，碱化作用在波动。失去了食物或水的来源，180个已知的当地土地动物种类只有几十种从干旱中幸存下来。当八十年代捕鱼业发生崩溃时, 数以万计的本地人逃离了他们的村庄，去大一点的城市去寻求新生活。那些剩下的人在这片土地上勉强维持生活。结核病到达了流行的比例, 婴儿死亡率达四分之一, 急性呼吸疾病占死亡率的百分之五十。整个区域里饮用水变得极其缺乏, 甚至呼吸空气都是危险的。化学物质从农业田地里流出，在海床上被烘干，与第一阵风一起被刮回到镇上。

The effects rippled throughout the region. Without this source of food or water, only a few dozen of the 180 known native land-animal species survived the desiccation. When the fishing industry collapsed in the 1980s, thousands of locals fled their villages to search for a new life in larger cities. Those remaining behind eked out an existence on the land. Tuberculosis reached epidemic proportions, and infant mortality rates quadrupled, with acute respiratory diseases accounting for 50 percent of the deaths. Potable water became scarce throughout the area, and even breathing the air was risky. Chemical runoff from agricultural fields simply dried on the seafloor and was ferried back into towns with the first winds.

到了1990年，收缩的海面分隔成两部分，北部的“小海”在卡扎克斯坦境内，而南部的"大海" 在临近的乌兹别克斯坦境内。当海水被蒸发以后，结为硬板状的沙子代替了千百个小岛周围的海水，它们点缀在海上，为野生生物提供了避风港。当伏罗丹尼亚岛周围的海水消失之后，苏联为露天测试炭疽病, 瘟疫, 和天花的毒菌战争设施在死海南部建立，2000年美国官员担心他们散发了致命的细菌。2002年，据联合国估计，大风每天将两百万吨盐和毒性沙子吹过死海地区，超过几千英里，有时候远达北极，该问题至今还在持续。

By 1990 the shrinking waters had separated into two parts---the northern “Small Sea” in Kazakhstan and the southern “Large Sea” in neighboring Uzbekistan. As the seas evaporated, hard-packed sand replaced water around the hundreds of islands that had dotted the sea and had provided a haven for wildlife. When the waters vanished around Vozrozhdeniya island, a Soviet germ-warfare facility for open-air testing of anthrax, plague, and smallpox in the southern Aral Sea, U. S. officials in 2000 became so worried that they sent lethal bacteria. In 2002 the U. N. estimated that winds carried 200.000 tons of salt and toxic sand each day throughout the Aral Sea region and thousands of miles beyond, sometimes reaching as far as Russia’s Arctic north- a problem that still continues.

（待续）

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