托福阅读真题练习：漠中的水源.docVIP

托福阅读真题练习：沙漠中的水源 沙漠中并不是完全没有降雨，只不过是变数很大。通常一年以内降雨次数少于4次是定义沙漠的限定条件。降水对沙漠地表和地底的水资源的影响很大程度上取决于地貌。平原和洼地是水源聚集的共同地貌特征，不过他们只占地表的很小一部分。 　　Water in the Desert 　　Rainfall is not completely absent in desert areas, but it is highly variable. An annual rainfall of four inches is often used to define the limits of a desert. The impact of rainfall upon the surface water and groundwater resources of the desert is greatly influenced by landforms. Flats and depressions where water can collect are common features, but they make up only a small part of the landscape. 　　Arid lands, surprisingly, contain some of the world’s largest river systems, such as the Murray-Darling in Australia, the Rio Grande in North America, the Indus in Asia, and the Nile in Africa. These rivers and river systems are known as exogenous because their sources lie outside the arid zone. They are vital for sustaining life in some of the driest parts of the world. For centuries, the annual floods of the Nile, Tigris, and Euphrates, for example, have brought fertile silts and water to the inhabitants of their lower valleys. Today, river discharges are increasingly controlled by human intervention, creating a need for international river-basin agreements. The filling of the Ataturk and other dams in Turkey has drastically reduced flows in the Euphrates, with potentially serious consequences for Syria and Iraq. 　　The flow of exogenous rivers varies with the season. The desert sections of long rivers respond several months after rain has fallen outside the desert, so that peak flows may be in the dry season. This is useful for irrigation, but the high temperatures, low humidities, and different day lengths of the dry season, compared to the normal growing season, can present difficulties with some crops. 　　Regularly flowing rivers and streams that originate within arid lands are known as endogenous. These are generally fed by groundwater springs, and many issue from limestone massifs, such as the Atlas Mountains in Moro