This is scientific American’s 60-second science. I’m Shannon Behrman.

这里是科学美国人的60秒科学。我是香农·贝尔曼。

And I’m Sarah Goodwin.

我是莎拉·古德温。

Hankins has done research into the indigenous practices before Europeans settled in the area.

汉金斯研究了欧洲人在此定居之前的土著习俗。

Ohlone peoples in, in this region, would've been living in this landscape and using these different resources from the different ecosystems that are there from the wetlands to the grasslands, to the different oak forest and conifer forest and so forth,

欧隆族人本该一直生活在这片土地上，利用来自不同生态系统的这些不同的资源，从湿地到草原，再到不同的橡树林和针叶林等等，

they each have their own timeframes for when fire would be appropriate.

他们每个人都有自己的时间表，会在合适的时候点火。

And Hankins says that they would take a hand in the process of ecosystem management when the timing seemed right.

汉金斯表示，他们会在时机合适时介入生态系统的管理过程。

So, some places, like I said, would, would burn relatively frequently.

如我所言，有些地方会相对频繁地点火。

People would see that, oh, the health of the grass is declining.

人们会看到，哦，草原的环境每况愈下。

We need to burn, or we're getting too much litter accumulation and on the forest floor.

我们需要点火，否则森林的地面上会垃圾成堆。

With this policy in place, people were limited in being able to burn because there were really strict penalties applied to people who, who set fires.

这一政策一下发，人们在自行燃火方面受到了限制，因为那些放火的人会受到非常严格的处罚。

But now we are seeing the folly of fire suppression in big basin and elsewhere.

但现在，在大盆地和其他地区的灭火行为显得十分荒唐。

I talked to Portia Halbert, the chief environmental scientist for Big Basin State Park.

我采访了盆地红杉州立公园的首席环境科学家波西亚·哈尔伯特。

She was there when the fire took off.

火灾发生时她就在现场。

It’s crazy how fast the fire came in.

火势蔓延得真快。

What was the burn of Big Basin like? What was the fire like, that came through?

大盆地燃烧起来是什么样的? 传来的大火是什么样的?

This part of California, the coastal central and Northern California. We have foggy cool summers.

加州沿海中部和北部这片区域，夏季多雾凉爽。

When I go to the beach, I don't wear my swimsuit. I often wear a wool sweater.

去海滩时，我不需要穿泳衣。我经常穿一件羊毛衫。

The day the fire started was unseasonably warm.

大火开始燃烧的那天气温高得反常。

I think it was probably in the, you know, low nineties and it was sunny and it was hot.

我觉得仿佛置身九十度的环境中：阳光明媚，天气炎热。

So that set the stage for a big fire. But how did it actually begin?

这就为一场大火做好了准备。但大火是如何开始的呢?

Part of that led to the conditions that set us up for a dry lightning event. So, we had lightning strikes.

这部分是干雷暴(无雨风暴闪电)事件发生的条件。我们后来遭遇了雷暴。

I think there was something like 11,000 of them that quickly started fires everywhere around the mountains. You could see these massive smoke columns.

我认为大约有1.1万道雷电发生在山区周围，迅速引燃火焰，巨大的烟柱随处可见。

We had a wind pickup out of the Northwest and it took the three fires that were burning all around Big Basin, and it just pushed. It just pushed the fire right through the park.

西北方向吹来的一阵风推动着大盆地周围燃烧的三场大火，让火势穿过整个公园。

How did it all end?

这一切又是如何结束的？

We weren't able to contain the fires with our current suppression resources in the state.

我们无法用加州现有的灭火资源控制火势。

What saved us is that we had the fog move in six days into the fire.

雾气在6天内进入了火灾区拯救了我们。

Our normal weather pattern was back.

正常天气模式又回来了。

So that marine influence that brings cool moist air from the ocean is now keeping the fire relatively mild.

海洋带来的凉爽潮湿的空气让现在的火势保持相对温和。

I thought that Big Basin would never burn.

我以为那个大盆地永远也烧不起来。

That's Christian Schwarz.

这是克里斯蒂安·施瓦茨。

After the Big Basin wildfire, he spent a lot of time crawling around with his face inches from the scorched earth.

经历大盆地野火后，他花了很长时间在这片土地上四处“爬行”，他的脸离焦土只有几英寸近。

That's because he's a mycologist. On the forest floor, the mushrooms he studies also had a story to tell.

那是因为他是一位真菌学家。在森林区的地表，他研究的菌菇们也有故事要讲。

My first visits back to Big Basin after the fire a very small number of species of mushroom were present, but the ones that were present were present in amazing volumes, amazing quantity of, of biomass.

火灾发生后，我第一次回到大盆地的时候，发现的蘑菇种类非常少，但这些蘑菇的数量惊人，生物量惊人。

And that's because they are fire responders or fire adapted species in some way, species that not only were able to tolerate the burning, but were in fact stimulated by it.

那是因为它们对火灾作出了迅速的反应，或者说它们是某种程度上的火灾适应物种，这些物种不仅能够忍受燃烧，实际上还因此生长得更好。

It’s all part of the recovery process, but what eventually emerges at Big Basin in the centuries ahead is unknowable–at this point.

这都是环境恢复过程的一部分，但大盆地在未来几个世纪里最终会出现什么，目前还不得而知。

Literally 95% of the park burning, left me realizing that there is no climate outcome that is impossible to imagine.

公园95%的地方都在燃烧，这让我意识到，我们能想象到的多糟糕的气候后果都可能发生.

The thing that I thought least likely and most painful happened. Climate change is here.

我曾以为最不可能也最痛心的事情发生了。气候变化就发生在这里。

It's a past tense verb. Climate changed.

这里应该是一个过去式：气候已经改变了。

The reporting for this podcast came from work that Sarah and I did as part of the Science Communication Lab.

本期播客报道出自莎拉与我在《科学传播实验室》所做的工作。

We are a nonprofit organization committed to science storytelling and filmmaking.

我们是一个致力于科学叙事与影片摄制的非营利组织。

The interviews used where gathered as part of short documentary film called "Fire Among Giants" which you can see at scientificamerican.com.

这些采访使用了短篇纪录片《巨人之火》的一部分，你可以在scientificamerican.com网站上对其进行浏览。

We want to thank Don, Portia, and Christian for giving their time to this project. And we want to thank all of you for listening.

我们想要感谢唐恩、波西亚和克里斯蒂安为这个项目付出的时间。我们也想感谢你们所有人的收听。

For Scientific American's 60-Second Science, I'm Sarah Goodwin.

谢谢大家收听科学美国人——60秒科学，我是莎拉·古德温。

And I'm Shannon Behrman.

我是香农·贝尔曼。

来源：Scientific American