英语听力：2012-01-29 从南极到北极 From Pole To Pole—6

 Midsummer on the tundra¹ and the sun does not set. At these altitudes, the sun’s rays are glancing and not enough of their energy reaches the ground to enable trees to grow. You’ll need to travel five hundred miles south from here before that is possible. 

 

These stunted² shrubs³ mark the tree line, the beginning of the boreal forest, the taiga. The needle-shaped leaves of the conifers are virtually inedible⁴. So this forest supports very little animal life. It’s a silent place where the snow is unmarked by footprints. In the Arctic winter, snow forms a continuous blanket across the land. But as spring creeps up from the south, the taiga is unveiled. This vast forest circling the globe contains a third of all the trees on earth and produces so much oxygen, it changes the composition of the atmosphere.

 

1 tundra   

n.苔原，冻土地带

参考例句：

• The arctic tundra is at the top of the world around the North Pole.北极冻原是指北极点周边的地区，是世界最高的地方。
• There is a large amount of methane gas under the Siberian tundra.西伯利亚的冻土地带之下有大量的甲烷气体。

2 stunted   

adj.矮小的；发育迟缓的

参考例句：

• the stunted lives of children deprived of education 未受教育的孩子所过的局限生活
• But the landed oligarchy had stunted the country's democratic development for generations. 但是好几代以来土地寡头的统治阻碍了这个国家民主的发展。

3 shrubs   

灌木( shrub的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The gardener spent a complete morning in trimming those two shrubs. 园丁花了整个上午的时间修剪那两处灌木林。
• These shrubs will need more light to produce flowering shoots. 这些灌木需要更多的光照才能抽出开花的新枝。

4 inedible   

adj.不能吃的，不宜食用的

参考例句：

• The food was totally inedible.食物完全无法下咽。
• These chemicals make the fruit inedible.这些化学品使这种水果不宜食用。