A fence built to keep out wild dogs has dramatically altered the Australian landscape

澳洲一处隔离野狗的栅栏显著地改变了该处的景观

By Lakshmi Supriya Jul. 6, 2018 , 11:55 AM 原文

Southern Australia’s Strzelecki Desert is home to two very different landscapes: an area of 10-meter-high sand dunes with patches of dense woody shrubs, and—just a few kilometers away—shorter and flatter dunes surrounded by sparse vegetation. The reason for the difference? Dingoes.

南澳州Strzelecki沙漠有两种显著不同的景观：10米高覆盖着茂密灌木的沙丘和几公里外又小又平坦覆盖着稀疏植被的沙丘。造成这种差异的原因是什么呢？野狗。

That’s the conclusion of a study published this week in the Journal of The Royal Society Interface, in which researchers compared the landscape on either side of a 5000-kilometer-long wire mesh dingo fence. Built almost a century ago to keep Australia’s wild dogs from private land and livestock, the structure appears to have altered an entire ecosystem, the team found. When the researchers compared drone-captured images of the dunes and vegetation cover on either side of the fence to historical aerial photographs taken between 1948 and 1999, they discovered that there are about 60 more woody shrubs per hectare on the side of the fence with no dingoes than on the other side. The dunes on the nondingo side are also about 66 centimeters taller.

本周发表在《英国皇家学会期刊》上一项研究表明了上述结论，研究者对比了长达5000公里的金属栅栏两旁的景观。一个世纪以前人们为了把野狗和私人土地家畜隔离开而修建了这种栅栏，研究团队发现栅栏似乎已经改变了整个生态系统。研究者对比1948年和1999年航拍的栅栏两边的沙丘和植被的照片，他们发现没有野狗的那侧比另一侧每公顷多60种灌木，没有野狗侧的沙丘也比另一侧高66厘米。

The likely explanation, the team says, is that without a top predator like the dingo, smaller hunters such as foxes and cats have flourished, decimating prey species like hopping mice and rabbits. With fewer animals left to eat the plant seeds, the shrub cover has increased. The shrubs hold down sand and cause winds to skim over their tops, causing dunes to grow taller and carving the landscape differently on the two sides of the fence.

研究团队表明，可能的解释是：没有了像野狗这样的顶级捕食者，小的捕食者例如狐狸和猫兴盛起来，捕食了大量老鼠和兔子，吃植物种子的动物大大减少，沙丘上的植被相应增加了。灌木压住沙子并导致风从其顶部掠过，导致沙丘长得更高，并且在栅栏的两侧塑造成了不同的景观。

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