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The real secret, though, is what you can't observe.
但真正的秘密却是你无法用眼直接观察到的。
The soil in the Cerrado runs deep, in places 80 feet, and to help survive the dry season and its fires, many plants sprout extensive root systems.
塞拉多的土壤层非常深，有些地方达到24米，许多植物为了在旱季和野火中保命而生出了广大的根系。
The vast majority of the Cerrado's biomass is subterranean. Some trees that look like spindly fence posts aboveground are muscle-rooted and brawny below.
所以塞拉多生物量的大头藏在地面之下。有些矮树表面长得像细弱的篱笆杆，土里的部分却雄伟而强健。
Biologists who examine this hidden realm call the Cerrado the upside-down forest.
研究其地下领域的生物学家把塞拉多称为“上下颠倒的森林”。
This underground world performs priceless ecological services.
而土壤内这部分的生态作用是无价之宝。
It's a massive carbon sink, locking away billions of tons of carbon dioxide in well-buried roots.
首先它是巨大规模的碳汇，以深埋的根部锁住数十亿吨二氧化碳。
As the Cerrado is converted to farmland -- the current rate is more than 4,000 acres a day -- the greenhouse gas is released.
随着塞拉多荒野被改造成农田--当前速度是每天1600公顷以上，封锁在地下的温室气体释放出来。
Each year, according to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), the discharge due to altering the Cerrado is equivalent to the annual emissions of 50 million cars.
世界自然基金会（WWF）估计因改造塞拉多地貌增加的排放量相当于5000万辆汽车。
If all the carbon held by the Cerrado were discharged, this might single-handedly push global warming over the 1.5-degree Celsius limit set by the United Nations at the Paris climate conference of 2015, a point at which the global ice sheets could inexorably melt, causing the seas to inundate every coastal city.
如果塞拉多的碳汇全部排出，也许就能凭此一地之力把全球变暖推上联合国在2015年巴黎气候变化大会设定的1.5摄氏度极限，令全球冰盖不可逆融化，所有沿海城市被海水淹没。
Deep soil is also a sponge. The Cerrado collects and stores seasonal rains in immense subterranean chambers. The more land that's cut above, the less water held below.
深层土壤也是一种吸水材料，塞拉多有多处巨大的地下空穴能收集和储存季节性雨水。地表土层被削掉的越多，下方蓄水量就越少。
These aquifers, geologists report, feed the headwaters of eight of the 12 major river basins in South America.
地质学家指出，这些含水层滋养着南美洲12个大河流域中的8个源头。
The Cerrado's underground tanks pump water all over the continent. If the Amazon is the lungs, the Cerrado is the heart.
其地下水最终漫灌到整片大陆。如果亚马孙雨林是地球之肺，塞拉多就是心脏。
To get to a place where the Cerrado's pulse can be experienced untamed and raw, take the road north out of Brasília.
要想感受塞拉多的野性脉搏，请从巴西利亚向北走。
It first runs arrow straight through the suburbs, then direct to the factory farms.
公路先是笔直穿过城郊，接着射向工业化农场。
Rows of soybeans roll to the horizons; grain trucks outnumber cars. Tractors spray the fields with white mist.
路上，一排排大豆秧滚向地平线，运粮卡车多过小汽车。拖拉机对田地喷着白雾。
More than 150 million gallons of pesticides, Brazilian environmental journalists report, douse the Cerrado each year.
据巴西环境问题记者报道，每年约有6亿升杀虫剂洒入塞拉多。
"The land has been decimated," says Brazilian ecologist Paulo Oliveira, editor of The Cerrados of Brazil, a book that explores the natural history of the region.
“土地元气大伤。”巴西生态学家保罗·奥利韦拉说，他曾作为编辑参与制作一本自然史类图书《巴西塞拉多》。
And soybeans, for the most part, aren't eaten by people -- they're shipped around the globe to feed cattle. The world demands beef.
而这里种的大豆多半不是供人食用，而是运往世界各地喂牛。世界需要牛肉。
After a couple of hours of driving, the windshield spattered with bugs, hills rise up, the giant farms dissipate, and the Cerrado exists in a natural state.
驱车几小时后，挡风玻璃上黏满撞碎的昆虫残躯，山丘耸起，大型农场变得稀落，塞拉多现出自然状态下的面目。
The terrain, admittedly, can appear weird. Soil toxicity meddles with tree growth, making the trunks all gnarled and hunched.
应当承认这面目是有些古怪之处的。土壤的毒性压抑着树木长势，使树干生得弯扭多节。
The frequent fires scorch the buds at the ends of branches, which are replaced by lower buds that grow at contorted angles, then those eventually get fire-burned too, and so on. It's basically a big thicket of elbows.
频发的野火烧焦枝条末端的新芽，比较靠后的树芽会补上，但长起来就是歪歪扭扭的，这些歪着长的枝干终究也会遭火烧，如此反复，树就长得好像全身都是胳膊肘。
Though not every Cerrado landscape looks Dr. Seuss strange.
但塞拉多并非每处风景都像“苏斯博士”笔下的画面般古怪。
The Cerrado is one huge, interconnected biome composed of a dozen varieties of smaller ecosystems, ranging from open grassland to dense, full-size woods.
它是由十多个小生态系统互连而成的生物大群落，其中既有开阔草原也有成规模的茂密林区。
Driving deeper in, some 150 miles from Brasília, travelers approach Chapada dos Veadeiros, one of the national parks in the Cerrado, where sections of closed-canopy forest shroud tumbling rivers.
驱车继续深入，走到离巴西利亚约2150英里的地方，就到了沙帕达-杜斯维阿迪罗斯附近，这是塞拉多地区的两座国家公园之一，密如屏障的树冠间藏着奔腾的河流。
There's a tourist town here, Alto Paraíso -- High Paradise -- where a steady stream of visitors, primarily from other parts of Brazil, hire certified hiking guides, lounge in streams, and purchase genuine Cerrado crystals, from pendant-necklace size to paperweight, dug from the ancient soil and perfect, say the shopkeepers, for cleansing your aura.
这里还有个旅游小镇阿尔图帕拉伊苏--名字意为“高处的乐园”，享有稳定的客流，顾客主要来自国内其他地区，到这里雇向导徒步，溯溪消闲，买古老土壤中出产的正宗塞拉多水晶，小块的做吊坠，大块的当镇纸，还附带店铺老板声称的完美“净化能量”。
