托福考试写作例文2
发布时间：2013/7/17 21:41:27 来源：城市网学院 编辑：admin
Now listen to part of a lecture on the same topic.
(Professor)
One thing that really concerns water resource analysts is how much water agriculture uses. Agriculture uses a lot of water, more than all other water-using sectors of society. One of our greatest concerns is the very high use of water by irrigation. This is because, in most cases, the water used for irrigation can’t be used afterward for other purposes, such as water supply for homes or industry.
Some forms of irrigation use water more efficiently than others. The efficiency of water use varies by region, crop, agricultural practice, and technology. The least efficient types of irrigation are the surface methods. Your reading really didn’t go into this, but think of how much water it takes for a traditional surface method like field flooding. It takes a lot of water to flood a field. The water collects into ponds or basins, but then most of it either evaporates into the air or passes down through the soil into groundwater. This means that, in lots of places, less than half of all the water applied to a field is actually used by the crop. The rest is lost to evaporation or to groundwater. All of the flooding methods generally waster a lot of water-water that could otherwise be used for other purposes.
Fortunately, there are several irrigation technologies that are more efficient than the poorly controlled and highly wasteful flooding methods. They range from sprinkler systems to drip irrigation. In sprinkler systems, water is sprayed over crops, and this provides an even distribution of water. New precision sprinkler technologies have greatly improved our ability to deliver water exactly when and where it’s needed. However, sprinkler systems are also a form of surface irrigation, and just as in other surface methods, some of the water is still lost to evaporation.
(Narrator)
Summarize the points made in the lecture, explaining how they cast doubt on points made in the reading.
