Task 4. Find in the text: 1) sentences with Passive Voice; 2) sentences with Participle I and Participle II. 
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Task 4. Find in the text: 1) sentences with Passive Voice; 2) sentences with Participle I and Participle II.



 

Практическое занятие 5 и 6. Рациональное использование почв

Task 1. Read and translate the following text.

IS SOIL AN ECOSYSTEM?

Yes. The familiar expression “cheap as dirt” reflects the low value we place on soil, which some who do value it highly have called Earth’s skin. Soil, especially topsoil, the dark carbon and biota rich organic material that covers the first few inches of some of the earth’s surface and enables plants to grow, is an invaluable resource and an ecosystem. It is home to an enormous number of diverse, especially small, organisms, and it is a major participant in the most basic biological cycles in the global ecological system including the nitrogen and carbon cycles. Topsoil covers only about 10 percent of the earth’s surface, and it is rapidly being depleted by such activities as industrial-scale farming and road and building construction, much faster than it can regenerate. By some calculations, at the current rate of depletion, the earth has about sixty years of topsoil left. This is a global problem being felt not just in industrialized countries such as the United States and Russia, but especially in poorer parts of the world. The Dust Bowl tragedy of the 1930s in the United States occurred because unwise farming practices, aided by strong winds and drought, stripped the fertile Great Plains of the rich soil and sturdy vegetation that had sustained life there for millennia, and that had drawn settlers to it in droves starting in the 1860s, prodded by the Homestead Act. These settlers unwittingly set themselves up for tragedy by plowing away the sturdy prairie grasses (using John Deere’s newly invented, fast) to produce wheat eagerly purchased by a growing US population. The result was bare, desiccated, depleted soil, which blew away in fierce winds. Four hundred thousand people fled or died. The dust bowl so shocked the United States that the Soil Conservation Service was created, numerous emergency measures were taken by President Franklin Roosevelt, and new soil management techniques were introduced such as crop rotation and cover crops. But problematic agricultural practices, combined with the demands of an expanding population, continue to strain agriculturally productive places. The Central Valley in California is a current example. It is about 450 miles long and about 50 miles wide. It is among the most fertile valleys in the world and provides one-quarter of the food for the United States. Seventeen percent of the nation’s irrigated land is there to support this productivity. The water comes largely from aquifers that are being depleted. Indeed, in the Central Valley significant land subsidence is occurring as groundwater is withdrawn. Much of the productivity, often from industrial-scale farms, depends on chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and antibiotics to sustain profits. The valley has some of the largest CAFOs in the United States and some of the biggest producers of such ubiquitous staples as carrots and tomatoes.

The environmental sustainability of the valley is at risk as it struggles with weakened soil, drought, and encroaching suburbia, not to mention pressing social issues arising from the often less than acceptable conditions of the agricultural workers in the valley. But the valley is also the home of many farms practicing sustainable agriculture, which many local organizations and academic institutions support. A sustainable Central Valley would integrate the three pillars of sustainability: environmental protection, economic profitability, and social equity.

Task 2. Translate the following words and word combinations from the text:

 

topsoil, the dark carbon and biota rich organic material, nitrogen carbon cycles, to deplete, the dust bowl, to strip the fertile soil, sturdy vegetation, drove, Homestead Act, to plow away the sturdy prairie grasses, to diminish the grasses, desiccated soil, crop rotation and cover crops, irrigated land, aquifer, subsidence, chemical fertilizer, ubiquitous, CAFO – Confined Animal Feeding Operation.

Task 3. Answer the questions to the text:

 

1. Why is soil an invaluable resource and an ecosystem?

2. What is the main reason for the depletion of topsoil?

3. What tragedy happened in the 1930s in the United States?

4. What caused the depletion of topsoil? And what was the result of that Act?

5. What is the present-day example of the depletion of the land?

6. Why is the valley considered as the most productive in the USA?

7. For what purpose do farmers use chemical fertilizers, pesticides and antibiotics?

8. Who supports the farms in the valley?

9. What are the pillars of the sustainability for the Central Valley?

 

Task 4. Find in the text the English equivalents of the following words and word combinations:

органический материал, богатый флорой и фауной; быстро истощаться такими видами деятельности, как крупномасштабное фермерство и строительство дорог и зданий; территории, подвергающиеся пыльным бурям и засухе; распахивать землю с сочными травами прерий; выращивать пшеницу в больших объемах для продажи растущему населению США; высушенная почва; севооборот и покрытие культур; водоносный пласт земли; удобрения.

Task 5. In English grammar, an attributive noun is a noun that modifies another noun and functions as an adjective. Also known as a noun premodifier, anoun adjunct, and aconverted adjective. Find the examples of such attributive nouns in the text.



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