5. Read the following sentences and point out the subject and the predicate in each of them:

1. This paper investigates the nature, causes and consequences of the Aral Sea problem.

2. One of the planet's most serious environmental and human tragedies is unfolding in the basin of the Aral Sea.

3. Expanding irrigation has reduced river inflow to the Aral Sea.

The Aral Sea had a productive fishery and served as a major transportation route.

4. Irrigation expansion in the Aral Sea basin after 1960 required much more water per hectar.

5. The Aral Sea is divided into two water bodies.

New words and expressions:

degradation – деградация

severe – суровый

cease – прекращать

adapt – приспосабливать

spawn – метать икру

feed – кормить, питаться

hinder – мешать

access – доступ

abandon – оставлять

suffer – страдать, испытывать

damage – повреждать

disaster – бедствие

decline – понижение

pasture – пастбище, подножный корм

affect – действовать, влиять

inedible – несъедобный

vegetation – растительность

graze – пастись

plateau – плато, плоскогорье

implicate – вовлекать

respiratory – дыхательный

digestive – пищеварительный

inhalation – вдыхание

ingestion – глотание

hygienic – гигиенический

drainage – сток

treatment – обработка

pesticide – пестицид

fertilizer – удобрение

contaminate – загрязнять, заражать

morbid – болезненный, патологический

constrained – принужденный

affliction – огорчение

morbidity – патология

Read the international words and give their Russian equivalents:

degradation, commercial, adapt, condition, area, navigation, kilometre, stop, port, major, limit, region, population, million, ecological, zone, serious, delta, reduction, associate, agriculture, practice, system, productivity, natural, vegetation, plateau, respiratory, variety, medical, hygienic, drainage, canal, minimal, critical, problem, pesticide, incedent, factor, diet, general, infant.

The environmental, economic and human degradation from the Aral Sea's desiccation have been wide-ranging and severe. Commercial fishing ceased in the early 1980s as native species, unable to adapt to rapidly changing conditions (chiefly rising salinity and loss of spawning and feeding areas), disappeared and the shoreline receded ten of kilometers from fishing towns and villages, hindering access to the sea by fishing boats. Commercial navigation across the Aral Sea also stopped as efforts to keep the increasingly long navigation channels open to the major port of Aralsk became too costly and difficult and were abandoned.

But damage has not been limited to the sea and settlements directly dependent on it. A region around the sea with a population in 1991 of nearly 4 mln has also suffered great damage and is considered an "ecological disaster zone". One of the most serious consequences has been the degradation of ecosystems in the Amu-Dar'ya and Syr-Dar'ya deltas owing to the huge reduction of flow through them and decline of groundwater levels in them associated with both reduced river discharge and the falling level of the Aral Sea.

Irrigated agriculture, practiced in the deltas of the Amu-Dar'ya and Syr-Dar'ya has been badly hurt by constrained water supplies resulting from greatly reduced river flow. Animal husbandry both in the deltas and in desert regions adjacent to the Aral Sea has been damaged by the diminishing productivity of pastures affected by desertification, dropping groundwater levels and replacement by inedible species of natural vegetation which is suitable for grazing.

Salt and dust blown from the increasingly large former sea bottom is carried as far as 500 km and settles over a considerable area adjacent to the Aral Sea. Natural vegetation and the crops in the Amu-Dar'ya delta to the South of the sea and pastures in the Ust-Yurt plateau to the West of the Aral Sea are suffering the most damage. Blowing salt and dust is also being implicated in increasingly high levels of respiratory illnesses, and even with throat and esophageal cancer.