◎　2050年死海成池水

位於約旦、以色列及巴勒斯坦境內的鹹水湖死海，是地球陸地的最低點，素有「地球肚臍」的別稱。由於景觀特殊，加上水質和湖中黑泥富含納、鉀、鎂等礦物質，有益於保養皮膚，過去以來成為許多觀光客、退休老人和愛美人士競相旅遊的地點。

但近年來，因死海當地氣候乾燥，降雨量稀少，死海蒸發量速度加快；主要流入河川約旦河河水遭上游農民截斷，做為灌溉之用；加上湖邊飯店、溫泉林立，濫用死海之水，使得死海的水量逐年減少。過去50年來，死海水位已由海拔負1,280英呎，降低至負1,368英呎，且水面每年以3英呎的速度下降。

更令約旦和以色列當局擔心的是，由於鹹水的流失，促使地下水侵入鹽層，導致死海西岸土地崩陷，產生了1千多個大大小小的陷穴，吞噬了湖岸的棗椰樹，並使得許多觀光飯店成為危樓，而正在興建或計畫中的觀光飯店，不得不停工。

死海的水量減少所產生的後遺症，已對約旦和以色列的觀光收入產生極大的衝擊。約旦大裂谷水資源局局長Zafer Alem說，若不拯救死海，到2050年時，死海可能僅存一小池的水，這對經濟和生態而言，將是一大傷害。

為了拯救死海，去年於南非約翰尼斯堡舉行的地球高峰會上，約旦和以色列就同意共同出資，興建一條從紅海到死海、長2百英哩的水道。兩國稱此輸水工程為「和平之泉」，希望引進紅海的水，減緩死海的下降程度。約旦也將藉此計畫興建海水淨化廠，解決該國長期缺水的困擾。不過，這項價值不菲的輸水工程，可能會破壞紅海珊瑚礁的生態，並改變死海的水質。

死海是地球陸地最低的地區，也是世界上含鹽量最高的水域，具有很高的科學和經濟價值。此外，猶太教、伊斯蘭教和基督教的很多聖地都位於死海地區。該區的生態環境也非常特殊，很多瀕臨絕種的鳥類就生活在這裡。因此，挽救死海對於以色列和約旦，乃至全世界來說，都有非常重要的意義。

It has shimmered and steamed at the lowest point on Earth since time immemorial（古老得無法記憶）. Its silence, seclusion and healing powers have lured people from biblical mystics to modern eco-tourists.

But the Dead Sea has been quietly dying for years.

And the two states abutting（毗鄰） its shrinking shoreline, Israel and Jordan, face formidable economic and ecological challenges in pondering how to save a unique natural wonder of the world.

They have begun to consider a "Red-Dead" solution -- a canal to pump water from the Red Sea to the Dead Sea. But huge costs, and the risk both of damaging the Red's famed coral reefs（珊瑚礁） and diluting（稀釋） the Dead's medicinal minerals, stand in the way.

Known as the Dead Sea because nothing can live in it, the world's saltiest body of water has fallen from 1,280 feet to 1,368 feet below sea level in the last 50 years.

The drop has accelerated to three feet a year recently, erasing a third of its ancient 366-square-mile size.

Modern economics are to blame - diversions（流向）to rain-starved farmland of Jordan River waters that feed the Dead Sea, and evaporation hastened by potash（鉀鹽）-mining in its southern basin.

Hotels and health spas built along the beach below spectacular rose- and orange-hued desert cliffs, as well as sites holy to Jews, Christians and Muslims, are now stranded a mile or more from the water's edge.

Retired Swiss couple Jean and Esther Haensenberger have been spending their annual "Kur" -- a Central European tradition of taking medicinal baths to treat skin ailments and stress -- at Israel's flagship Dead Sea resort of Ein Gedi since the 1980s.

At first, they could walk a few paces from the Ein Gedi Spa complex to the beach for a float in windless waters so buoyant（有浮力的）that one can read a book while lying on one's back.

Now visitors board a tractor-drawn trolley（台車）that shuttles them half a mile to the water, avoiding a trudge（步履蹣跚）across mudflats in sauna-like（三溫暖似的）heat typifying the inland sea's micro-climate.

"It's over twice the distance out today. It's sad that another rare preserve of nature is vanishing," said Jean Haensenberger as he and his wife rode to the shore. "If the sea keeps going down, will people like us keep coming?"

The number of foreign tourists in Israel has dropped because of a 3-year-old Palestinian revolt. And tourism in Jordan has suffered from war and postwar turmoil in nearby Iraq.

Now the Dead Sea's retreat is worsening the economic fallout of Palestinian violence along the western shore by spawning subsidence（下陷）-- more than 1,000 "sinkholes（陷穴）" up to 65 feet deep and 82 feet across.

Caused by a dissolution of salt strata in underground fresh water replacing departed salt water, sinkholes have swallowed up groves of date palms（棗椰）, shut down Ein Gedi's tourist campsite and a nearby army base and scuttled a 5,000-room hotel project nearby.

A camp staffer and a worker at Ein Gedi's nearby palm plantation were sucked into collapsing sinkholes and injured.

Sinkholes appearing on the Jordanian shore have forced the evacuation of more than 3,000 people. Hundreds of millions of dollars worth of hotel-spa complexes in the planning could be at risk.

"We fear that by 2050 there will be just a small spot of water that will be a disaster economically and ecologically, if nothing is done," said Zafer Alem, secretary general of the Jordan Valley Water Authority.

"We are raising the red flag to the international community to help us save what is really a world heritage site, belonging not just to Jordan and Israel," he told Reuters by telephone.

At the Earth Summit in Johannesburg a year ago, Israel and Jordan agreed to look into building a "Red-Dead" pipeline that would run 200 miles along their rugged（崎嶇的）desert border. Dubbed the "Peace Conduit," the canal would be the biggest Israel-Jordanian joint venture since their 1994 peace treaty.

Israeli officials cite the importance of cooperation with former Arab enemies as one of the main reasons they favor the Red-Dead canal over an older "Med-Dead" proposal to take water from the Mediterranean Sea, which would not involve Jordan.

Studies and construction could take a decade and cost several billion dollars, part of that for desalinization plants（海水淨化廠）that Jordan sees as a vital spin-off（副產品）to relieve its severe shortage of drinking water.

Q1：死海的名稱從何而來？

A：死海為何叫死海？看了有關死海的簡介之後，讀者應該有點概念了。死海因為水太鹹，除了人類可以戲水外，不適合動植物生存，因此被稱為死海。死海的水密度極高，人類在上頭戲水時，可以輕易地浮在水面上，所以下次看到有人整個身體浮在水面上，還得意的伸出舌頭表示自己很行，那個人一定是待在死海。

Sounds kind of creepy（毛骨悚然）, doesn't it? It's called the Dead Sea because nothing lives in it. It is some of the saltiest water anywhere in the world, almost six times as salty as the ocean! There's no seaweed or plants of any kind in or around the water. There are no fish or any kind of swimming, squirming creatures living in or near the water. As a matter of fact, what you'll see on the shores of the Sea is white, crystals of salt covering everything. And this is no ordinary table salt, either.

The salts found in the Dead Sea are mineral salts , just like you find in the oceans of the world, only in extreme concentrations. The water in the Dead Sea is deadly to living things. Fish accidentally swimming into the waters from one of the several freshwater streams that feed the Sea are killed instantly, their bodies quickly coated with a preserving layer of salt crystals and then tossed onto shore by the wind and waves. Brutal!

The guy to the left is actually floating in the Dead Sea. "But, hey, I thought you said the Dead Sea was DEADLY!" Not to us. Humans are remarkably adaptable. We can swim in the Dead Sea, just like we can swim in the ocean. Well, people don't really "swim" in the Dead Sea - they just "hang out". That's what's so cool about the Dead Sea. Because of the extremely high concentration of dissolved mineral salts in the water it's density is way more than that of plain old fresh water. What this means is our bodies are more bouyant in the Dead Sea - so you bob（浮動）like a cork（軟木）.

In fact, people are so bouyant in this water, it makes it kind of tough to actually swim. Most people like to just kick back in the water and read. It almost looks as though this guy is sitting on an air mattress that has sunk below the surface, but he's not. He's really just floating, without having to hold is feet in that position! If you think this is easy, try floating like this in a freshwater swimming pool.

A：橫貫於非洲東部的非洲大裂谷，是由兩個板塊擠壓後，中間部分陷落而成的，而大裂谷的起點就位於死海北方。若不了解板塊運動的原理，可以拿塊太妃糖，試著把它撕成一半。

This lesson takes us back to the subject of plate tectonics（板塊構造）. In this part of the world there is a rift（裂縫）forming where two crustal plates are spreading apart. The East Rift Valley runs through most of Africa, but it starts north of the Dead Sea and runs south along the eastern side of the continent. The Sea is located right along the Rift Valley where the earth's crust（地殼）is being stretched thin. To get an idea of how this "crustal spreading" thing works, take a bar of taffy, or taffy-like candy and try to pull it apart. You'll see where the candy starts to come apart it gets really thin just before it breaks.

That's what is happening to the earth's crust in the Rift Valley. Where the earth's crust gets thin that part of the surface sinks downward. You know what? The Dead Sea is still sinking lower, even today. Scientists figure that the Dead Sea lowers by as much as 13 inches per year. On a geologic（地質學上的）time scale that's incredibly fast!

A：死海因處於地球陸地的最低點，儘管有約旦河之類的河川流入，但死海本身因地勢太低，水無法外流，唯一的外流途徑就是靠太陽蒸發。湖水蒸發後，留下未溶解的礦物質於死海裡，使得死海的水更鹹，百物難生。

Anyway, back to the formation of the Dead Sea. We talked about how the surface of the Sea got down so low in elevation, but why is it so salty? All roads lead to the Sea when it comes to the rivers in the area. The Dead Sea is continually fed water from the rivers and streams coming down off the mountains that surround it. But the kicker is this....no rivers drain out of the Dead Sea. The only way water gets out of the Sea is through evaporation.

And boy does it evaporate! This part of the world get plenty hot. When the water evaporates, it leaves behind all the dissolved minerals in the Sea, just making it saltier. In fact, it's through the dual action of; 1) continuing evaporation and 2)minerals salts carried into the Sea from the local rivers, that makes the Sea so salty. The fact that the water doesn't escape the Sea just traps the salts within its shores. There's nothing living in the Dead Sea because it got so salty, so quickly, that evolution has not had a chance to produce any creatures that could adapt to such brutal conditions.