2024年高考英语新课标Ⅰ卷 - 阅读理解D

In the race to document the species on Earth before they go extinct, researchers and citizen scientists have collected billions of records. Today, most records of biodiversity are often in the form of photos, videos, and other digital records. Though they are useful for detecting shifts in the number and variety of species in an area, a new Stanford study has found that this type of record is not perfect.
为了在地球上的物种灭绝之前记录它们，研究人员和公民科学家收集了数十亿份记录。如今，大多数生物多样性记录通常以照片、视频和其他数字记录的形式出现。尽管它们有助于检测一个地区物种数量和种类的变化，但斯坦福大学的一项新研究发现，这种类型的记录并不完美。

“With the rise of technology it is easy for people to make observations of different species with the aid of a mobile application,” said Barnabas Daru, who is lead author of the study and assistant professor of biology in the Stanford School of Humanities and Sciences. “These observations now outnumber the primary data that comes from physical specimens, and since we are increasingly using observational data to investigate how species are responding to global change, I wanted to know: Are they usable?”
该研究的主要作者、斯坦福大学人文与科学学院生物学助理教授Barnabas Daru说：“随着技术的兴起，人们很容易借助移动应用程序对不同物种进行观察，这些观测结果现在超过了来自物理标本的原始数据，由于我们越来越多地使用观测数据来研究物种如何应对全球变化，我想知道：它们可用吗？”

Using a global dataset of 1.9 billion records of plants, insects, birds, and animals, Daru and his team tested how well these data represent actual global biodiversity patterns.
Daru和他的团队使用19亿份植物、昆虫、鸟类和动物记录的全球数据集，测试了这些数据在多大程度上代表了实际的全球生物多样性模式。

“We were particularly interested in exploring the aspects of sampling that tend to bias data, like the greater likelihood of a citizen scientist to take a picture of a flowering plant instead of the grass right next to it,” said Daru.
Daru说：“我们特别感兴趣的是探索采样中容易对数据产生偏差的方面，比如公民科学家拍摄开花植物照片的可能性更大，而不是旁边的草”。

Their study revealed that the large number of observation-only records did not lead to better global coverage. Moreover, these data are biased and favor certain regions, time periods, and species. This makes sense because the people who get observational biodiversity data on mobile devices are often citizen scientists recording their encounters with species in areas nearby. These data are also biased toward certain species with attractive or eye-catching features.
他们的研究表明，大量仅观察记录并没有带来更好的全球覆盖率。此外，这些数据是有偏见的，有利于某些地区、时间段和物种。这是有道理的，因为在移动设备上获得生物多样性观测数据的人往往是记录附近地区所见物种的公民科学家。这些数据也偏向于某些具有吸引力或引人注目特征的物种。

What can we do with the imperfect datasets of biodiversity?
我们能如何处理不完善的生物多样性数据集？

“Quite a lot,” Daru explained. “Biodiversity apps can use our study results to inform users of oversampled areas and lead them to places — and even species — that are not well-sampled. To improve the quality of observational data, biodiversity apps can also encourage users to have an expert confirm the identification of their uploaded image.”
“相当多，”Daru 解释，“生物多样性应用程序可以利用我们的研究结果告知用户过度采样的区域，并将他们带到采样不好的地方，甚至物种。为了提高观测数据的质量，生物多样性程序还可以鼓励用户让专家确认上传图像的身份。”