1 . Last summer on the Hawaiian Island of Kauai, Tina Taniguchi worked close to the ground. Her coconut leaf hat covered most of her thick brown hair. Wet soil had gotten on her clothes and her smiling face.

Taniguchi smiles a lot while working on the Hanapepe salt land on the west side of Kauai. It is a piece of land about half a hectare in size with pools of salty water. The salt becomes crystals (晶体)as the water dries.

“The work is tiring, but for me it’s also play,” Taniguchi said with a laugh. Taniguchi’s family is one of 22 families who make salt, following a cultural and spiritual tradition. Hanapepe is one of the last remaining salt lands in Hawaii. Its salt can be traded or given away but must never be sold. Hawaiians use it in cooking, healing, and as protection.

Over the past 10 years, there have been several threats to this field. They encompass development, pollution from a neighboring airfield, damage to the sand from vehicle traffic and waste left by visitors to the nearby beach. In addition, rising sea levels and weather might stop the practice.

The process of turning sea water into salt can be slow. The season begins once the rain stops and water starts to disappear from the salt beds. Ocean water travels underground and enters the wells. Each family has their own well. As water enters the well, so do tiny, red brine shrimp. These small ocean animals give Hanapepe salt its unusual, sweet taste.

The families first clean the salt beds and line them with black clay (陶土). Then they move water from the wells into the beds. There, salt crystals form. The top level, or layer, is the whitest. It is used for table salt. The middle layer is pinkish and is used in cooking, while the bottom layer, which is a deep red color, is used in blessings.

2 . When lightning caused fires around California’s Big Basin Redwoods State Park north of Santa Cruz in August 2020, the fire spread quickly. Mild fires strike coastal redwood (红杉) forests about every decade. The giant trees resist burning thanks to the bark (树皮), up to about 30 centimetres thick at the base, which contains acids. Their branches and needles are normally beyond the reach of flames. But this time flames shot through the top of 100-metre-tall trees, burning the needles. “It was shocking,” says Drew Peltier, a tree expert at Northern Arizona University. “It really seemed like most of the trees were going to die.”

Yet many of them lived. In a paper published yesterday in Nature Plants, Peltier and his colleagues help explain why: The survivors use long-held energy reserves—sugars that had been made from sunlight decades earlier—and poured them into buds (芽) that had been lying dormant (休眠的) under the bar k for centuries.

“This is one of those papers that challenges our previous knowledge on tree growth,” says Adrian Rocha, an ecosystem ecologist at the University of Notre Dame. “It is amazing to learn that carbon taken up decades ago can be used to sustain its growth into the future.” The findings suggest redwoods have the tools to cope with big fires driven by climate change, Rocha says. Still, it’s unclear whether the trees could cope with the regular infernos that might occur under a warmer climate environment.

The fire in 2020 was so intense that even the top branches of many trees burned and their ability to photosynthesize (光合作用) went up in smoke along with their pine needles. Trees photosynthesize to create sugars and other carbohydrates (碳水化合物), which provide the energy they need to grow and repair tissue. Trees do store some of this energy, which they can call on during a drought or after a fire. Although the redwoods have sprouted (长出) new growth, Peltier and other forest experts wonder how the trees will cope with far less energy from photosynthesis, given that it will be years before they grow as many needles as they had before the fire. “They’re alive, but I would be a little concerned for them in the future.”

Plogging     1     (refer) to the act of picking up trash while jogging. Ploggers collect trash, such as plastic bottles, waste paper and cans from parks, beaches, and other outdoor areas when they exercise.

The     2     (found) of plogging was Erik Ahlstrom. He used to live in a small town, but later he moved to Stockholm,     3     capital city of Sweden. He could hardly believe     4     he saw there—garbage filled every corner of the city. So, he decided to do something     5     (change) the situation. Every time he went jogging, he would invite some friends to pick up trash with him. This gradually became a habit and inspired more and more people to join in the activity. Some famous sports brands even began to provide     6     (run) shoes for plogging enthusiasts (爱好者). Since then, plogging     7     (become) increasingly popular around the world.

Now, plogging is widely recognized as an     8     (effect) and eco-friendly way to keep healthy and contribute to the environment. Whether you are a fitness enthusiast     9     simply want to do your part to protect the environment, plogging will be a great choice. So, why not give it a try? You might find a new way to stay connected to nature and make the Earth a     10     (good) place to live on.

6 . Scientists have found a new way to break down a group of harmful chemicals very hard to get rid of. The discovery could help solve a dangerous and growing problem — how to clean up the pollution of “forever chemicals”.

The group of chemicals known as PFAS (全氟烷基物) are pretty amazing. They’re non-stick, waterproof, and oil proof. They don’t burn easily or dissolve (溶解) in water. So scientists got really excited when they were discovered. Businesses started putting PFAS in all sorts of products, from non-stick pans to waterproof clothes, and from fire-fighting spray to carpets that resist stains. Even things like food wrappers and floss for cleaning your teeth contain PFAS chemicals.

But after a while, scientists realized the same things that made the chemicals useful also caused a real problem — PFAS doesn’t break down in nature. It doesn’t dissolve in water or bum. Not even bacteria can break PFAS down. No wonder these chemicals are known as “forever chemicals”.

As a result, PFAS chemicals surge in the environment. The chemicals are found in air, water, and dirt around the world — and in animals and people. In the US, 97% of humans have PFAS in their blood.

Luckily, scientists in the US have now found a way to break down some PFAS chemicals. Their solution requires boiling PFAS with two other very common chemicals. These chemicals can be found in just about any laboratory.

Dr. Brittany Trang, one of the scientists involved, said she didn’t even want to test the idea at first. “I thought it was too simple,” she said. But the process worked.

The research involved 10 types of PFAS, including two of the most common kinds. That’s a big step. But there are over 12,000 different kinds of PFAS. It’s important to note that the new method can only break down PFAS chemicals that have already been collected. Figuring out how to remove PFAS chemicals from the environment and collect them remains a huge challenge.

7 . Growing up in Kenya, Lesein Mutunkei, together with his family, always celebrated significant occasions by planting trees, which motivated him to protect the environment. It’s what the now 18-year-old soccer player treasures, especially since Kenya has an ongoing problem with deforestation.

Mutunkei follows in the footsteps of the late Kenyan Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai who founded the Green Belt Movement in 1977. This initiative has resulted in the planting of over 51 million trees to date.

In 2018, Lesein decided to start a movement of his own. He started by planting one tree for every goal he scored during a football match. He called it Trees4Goals, and it has grown so much that he now plants 11 trees, one for each member of his team, every time he scores. Through this, he wants to inspire young people, specifically his fellow athletes, to follow in his footsteps, take nature conservation seriously, and promise to plant trees every time they score. As a result, some of them have adapted this practice for their sports. “Seeing that they’re taking that responsibility because of the project I started, for me, that is the biggest achievement,” he said.

The initiative has caught the attention of English football club Arsenal and Kenya’s Ministry of Environment and Forestry, which he now works with regularly and gets advice from.

Like Green Belt Movement, Trees4Goals, which has planted 5,500 trees so far, has made it. While Lesein has received some recognition for his initiative, he sets his sights on making it a worldwide phenomenon. “Football is a universal game, and climate change is a universal problem,” he explains. “It has the power to unite, educate and inspire my generation to create a safer and greener future.” This is why he wants to work with the world’s biggest football federation FIFA.

As for what others can do to fight deforestation or other environmental concerns, the teenager says it’s important to just get involved in some way, no matter how small.

9 . Sounds from human activity flood across the oceans, causing trouble to ocean creatures. And climate (气候) change may make some places even louder.

Researchers have expected the oceans to get noisier because of increasing human activity. “The more goods you buy, the more shipping you have, so the more noise you have.” says Luca Possenti, a scientist studying sound in the ocean at the Royal Netherlands Institute. But Possenti and his co-worker realized that climate change might also influence how sound travels through the water.

Human-caused climate change is changing ocean temperatures, salt levels and acidity (酸度). So Possenti’s team used computers to model how those factors (因素) influence noise levels across the world’s oceans.

When waters become more acidic, they can’t take in sound at some wavelengths as well, so those sounds can travel further, adding to the noise in some areas. This effect is relatively small. Other changes impact the sound level more, the researchers found. Changes to temperature and salt levels can change how well different layers (层) of the ocean mix, which, in turn, impacts how sound travels.

The team predicted (预测) models of the world in about 70 years if climate change continues. And then they compared them with models of the world now. In the North Atlantic, they saw an increase in sound levels in the upper 125 meters of the ocean. This was caused mostly by ice melting (融化) off of Greenland, forming a cold layer of water near the ocean’s surface. Sound traveling through water tends to go toward the coldest area. As a result, sound waves tended to get stuck in the cold top layer-spreading further out across the water, instead of traveling deeper. That increased the noisiness at this depth in the North Atlantic. The models suggested that a single ship could sound about five times as loud underwater because of this. Considering all the ship traffic between Europe and North America, that may stress animals, many of which communicate, and catch food with sound.

Xixi, located less than five kilometers from the West Lake in the west of Hangzhou, is China’s first national wetland park. The area covers about 10 square kilometers and it     1     (be) around for more than 1,500 years, although it was only recently reopened     2     (offer) visitors a chance to escape from the concrete of the city. Despite its growing popularity,     3     wetland’s winding waterways, thick greenery and wide     4     (variety) of wildlife guarantee its peaceful spots in nature.

Wetlands themselves are one of the most biologically diverse ecosystems,     5     (act) as natural green lungs, water purification (净化) systems and flood control. But wetlands are     6     (serious) threatened by environmental pollution worldwide nowadays. More than 200square kilometers of wetland in the country have disappeared every year     7     average in the past decade, the China Institute for Marine Affairs warns. The wetlands of the Yellow and East China seas have lost up to 90 percent of their natural function, the institute reports,     8     makes the 226 plant species, 50 kinds of fish and aquatic (水生的) animals as well as 126 kinds of birds in Xixi even     9     (valuable).

Xixi’s native vegetation,     10     (water) by six crossing rivers, consists of subtropical mountainous swamp (沼泽) and evergreen forest.