2019-08-27 TE段落阅读

文章来自经济学人August 10th，Science & technology 专题部分的一篇讲生态环境的文章，标题是burning questions. 笔记是文章的第一段内容。

Ecology is a complicated thing. Given the facts that elephant damage often kills trees and bush fires often kill trees it would be reasonable to deduce that a combination of the two would make things worse. Counter-intuitively, though, as research just published in Biotropica, by Benjamin Wigley of Nelson Mandela University in South Africa shows, if a tree has already been damaged, fire can actually help to make things better.

counter-intuitively：形容词，违反直觉的，不合常理的。counter-是一个常见的前缀，表示“the opposite of sth”，counterproductive 适得其反的，counterbalance 抵消，可以同义替换cancel out.

段落大意：生态系统是复杂的。一棵树的生命遭受着大象和火灾的威胁，但是如果两个威胁同时发生，危机就有可能转变成机会。段首点明了文章的三个主角——象群、大火和树——以及它们之间的关系。