Soru

Passage

For three months, Evelyn marked the contours of the valley, her ink-stained fingers tracing the boundaries where the river met the shale cliffs. In her journal, she noted the locations of ancient sycamores and the subtle changes in the soil's color. Yet, it was not the physical features of the land that occupied her thoughts, but the blank spaces on the map she had inherited from her predecessor, Arthur Pendelton. Pendelton’s map, commissioned by the mining syndicate, was notoriously precise about the presence of iron ore deposits, but it showed a curious disregard for the seasonal wetlands at the valley’s base. Evelyn's own measurements revealed that during the spring thaw, these wetlands expanded to submerge the very paths Pendelton had marked as primary transit routes. In his letters to the syndicate, Pendelton had described the valley as "eminently traversable year-round," a claim that had hastened the investment of thousands of pounds in heavy machinery. As Evelyn watched the rising water slowly swallow the low-lying thicket, she realized that the omission on Pendelton's map was unlikely to have been an oversight by a surveyor of his renowned caliber.

Based on the passage, which of the following best describes the implied relationship between Pendelton’s omission of the wetlands and the mining syndicate’s investment?