1 . China’s second national botanical (植物学的) garden, South China National Botanical Garden, was set up in Guangzhou on July 11th, 2022.
With a total of 319 hectares of core functional area planned, the new national botanical garden was built based on South China Botanical Garden. It spans Guangzhou and Zhaoqing, two cities in Guangdong Province.
The South China National Botanical Garden aims to strengthen the conservation, scientific research and knowledge broadcasting of tropical (热带的) and subtropical (亚热带的) plants. The garden has three research centers, two national-level field stations and three key laboratories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. There are 17, 168 protected plants, 643 rare and endangered plants, and 337 national key wild protected plants in the garden at present.
The garden will participate in plant diversity protection both in China and the world and achieve the conservation goal of 20, 000 species. Meanwhile, it aims to play a world-leading role in collection and storage of living plants, among which 6, 000 species are economic plants.
Besides, 95 percent of rare and endangered plants in South China will be effectively protected, thus to provide plant resources for green development.
China is one of the countries in the world with the richest biodiversity, having more than 37, 000 known species of higher plants, accounting for about one tenth of the world’s total.
The South China National Botanical Garden, together with the national botanical garden in Beijing, has formed a system of collection and complete the retention of wild plant groups, which is helpful to maintain the country’s plant diversity.
1. What can be inferred about South China National Botanical Garden?| A．It is well equipped. | B．It only offers service for research. |
| C．It has become a popular scenic spot. | D．It is the largest national botanical garden. |
| A．They are dying out sharply. |
| B．Most of them will be protected well. |
| C．They will be used to improve economic development. |
| D．Most of them are transplanted to botanical gardens. |
| A．Development. | B．Comparison. | C．Preservation. | D．Improvement. |
| A．A Garden For Collecting And Studying Plants |
| B．A Novel Way To Strengthen Plant Conservation |
| C．China’s Various Environmental Protection |
| D．China’s Second National Botanical Garden |
2 . For centuries humans believed the ocean was so vast that it was impossible to do it measurable harm. But we now know human activities can destroy marine (海洋的) habitats, dangerously pollute seawater and make sea environments more acidic. Overharvesting has even directly pushed many ocean species into the especially endangered category. This past March, the smooth handfish (光滑手鱼) officially became the first modern-day marine fish to be declared extinct.
Handfish are a family of 14 unusual bottom-living species. Unlike most other fishes, they do not have a larval phase (幼虫期) and do not move around very much as adults; these features make them sensitive to environmental changes, according to Graham Edgar, a marine ecologist at the University of Tasmania. The smooth handfish was once common enough to be one of the first fish species described by European explorers in Australia. Now none has been reported in over a century. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List guidelines officially define “extinct” as meaning “there is no reasonable doubt that the last individual has died.” Edgar and the members of Australia’s National Handfish Recovery Team were forced to that conclusion earlier this year, and it was placed in the extinct category.
Scientists are unsure exactly what finished off the species, but others in the region are threatened by trawl fishing (拖网捕鱼), pollution and climate change. Edgar says additional marine fish species may already be extinct as well, and many more are endangered. “It might be hard to imagine why a little organism in a place that few humans ever visit might be important,” says Katie Matthews, chief scientist for the non-profit conservation group Oceana. “But biodiversity matters, even if you can’t see it with your own eyes.”
Ideally, this news will be a sad wakeup call: “Some remaining species of handfish are endangered,” Matthews says, “but with smart action we can lessen those threats.”
1. According to the text, which is NOT the problems caused by human activities to the ocean?| A．The habitats of marine creatures are damaged. |
| B．The seawater is heavily polluted. |
| C．The handfish are extinct completely. |
| D．The sea contains more acid than before. |
| A．National Handfish Recovery Team. |
| B．IUCN Red list. |
| C．The bottom-living species. |
| D．The smooth handfish. |
| A．Some species in rarely visited places are of little importance. |
| B．Measures should be taken to maintain the diversity of species. |
| C．It is too late to protect the endangered handfish. |
| D．Additional marine fish species may become extinct or endangered. |
| A．Human Activities. |
| B．A Marine Fish Extinction. |
| C．Species Diversity Conservation. |
| D．Marine Protection. |
3 . Have you ever wondered how mosquitoes are so good at finding you? A new study has just identified a new way they home in on us. It’s visual. Mosquitoes just like the look of our skin.
Claire Rusch and her colleagues have been working to uncover ways to avoid mosquito bites. And this biologist knows plenty about that. After all, to study mosquitoes, “you get bitten a lot,” she notes. “It’s not easy to work with an animal that preys(捕食) on you.”
To test whether a mosquito has color preference, Rusch got help from a software engineer who designed a test box that was 450 mosquito-body-lengths long. Lined with cameras, it recorded the insects’ flight patterns. Two small colored disks were laid on the floor of the box.
The researchers released about 50 starved mosquitoes into the box. Mosquitoes don’t start hunting until they’ve smelt carbon dioxide(CO2). So, the team sprayed(喷) CO2 inside the box as part of the experiment. Cameras recorded where’ the mosquitoes flew and how they interacted with the colored disks. Whichever disk the mosquitoes flew around longer would be the color the insects preferred.
They found before CO2 was sprayed, the mosquitoes ignored all the colored disks. With CO2, mosquitoes ignored any disk that was green, blue or purple. But the insects did fly toward disks that were red, orange or light blue. These colors, apparently, were inviting. The mosquitoes seemed to especially like red.
The result was beyond the researchers’ expectations because scientists long thought that mosquitoes relied mostly on body smells and heat to find humans. Now, they know that vision also plays an important role.
There is still much to learn about how mosquitoes see their world. It seems logical that mosquitoes might be attracted to red since that is the color human skin appears to them. Still unknown is why they are also attracted to light blue. And, importantly, how might these new data on color preferences be used to design better mosquito traps?
1. What does the underlined word “that” in paragraph 2 refer to?| A．identifying various mosquitoes. | B．Teaming up with other colleagues. |
| C．Avoiding being bitten by mosquitoes. | D．Uncovering ways to catch mosquitoes. |
| A．To stop mosquitoes flying away. | B．To track mosquitoes more easily. |
| C．To make mosquitoes hunt actively. | D．To put more pressure on mosquitoes. |
| A．Mosquitoes track people by smelling. | B．Mosquitoes are good at finding their targets. |
| C．Mosquitoes see the world in a different way. | D．Mosquitoes can use eyes when hunting food. |
| A．The things remaining to be explored. | B．The world in the eyes of mosquitoes. |
| C．The color preferences of mosquitoes. | D．The practical application of the findings. |
内容包括： 1.现状描述；2.倡议举措；
参考词汇：低碳生活a low-carbon life
注意：1.词数100左右；2.题目已为你写好。
Small acts make a big difference
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5 . Houston-based Dream Harvest Farming Co. is a vertical (垂直的) indoor farming company producing leafy-greens and herbs and delivering them locally to grocery stores in Texas and nearby states.
Zain Shauk, co-founder and CEO of Dream Harvest Farming Co., says on this week’s show of the Houston Innovators Podcast, “Thirty-five percent of the produce grown is thrown away before you even have a chance to eat it. Almost more shocking than that is that 80 percent of our water use as a nation is agricultural.” Constant water shortage is limiting outdoor farming in Texas State. So the city Huston relies on California for leafy-greens. But on account of the fact that it takes produce seven to ten days to travel from the West Coast to Texas, it’s not an ideal process in any way. Dream Harvest can change that, which was why the idea for the project was brought forward.
“The climate is changing now. We always talk about Earth Day and the importance of realizing our impact on the planet, but we are already there,” Shauk says on the show. The future of produce depends on making more environmentally friendly changes to the supply chain, and new technologies are enabling vertical indoor farming to bring these changes in some part.
Dream Harvest recently received a $50 million financial support from Orion Energy Partners to open a 100,000-square-foot indoor farming facility in Houston to increase production. Shauk says he’s also using the funding to support research and development to extend to other types of produce, but he has a lot to consider—affordability of the produce, maintaining sustainability, and more. “It’s going to take a lot of work and a lot of research. When we started, we weren’t growing in a way that makes financial sense with the amount of money we have to spend growing the product—and now we do,” Shauk says.
1. Where does the inspiration for Dream Harvest come from?| A．The progress in modern farming approaches. |
| B．The water-shortage and inconvenient product transportation. |
| C．The development of new species of leafy-greens. |
| D．The impact of outdoor agriculture on the environment. |
| A．We’ve already given up hope. | B．We’ve changed the climate. |
| C．We’ve already realized the problem. | D．We are protecting the Earth. |
| A．Satisfied. | B．Doubtful. | C．Disappointed. | D．Unconcerned. |
| A．Agriculture on the planet. | B．Ideal greens in the future. |
| C．Support from Dream Harvest. | D．Houston vertical indoor farming. |
6 . When it comes to the smartest species within the animal kingdom, elephants are definitely near the top of the list. Studies have shown that elephants have complex behaviors and survival skills. After all, an elephant’s brain weighs almost 5 kilograms and has three times more neurons (神经元) than a typical human brain.
Elephants have impressive memories. We’ve all heard the old saying “an elephant never forgets” at some point. As it turns out, the saying is based on far more truth than you’d think. Elephants are capable of remembering food and water locations for amazingly long periods of time! Elephants also remember friends and even enemies for several years.
The most well-known method of measuring animal intelligence is the “mirror test”. Most animal species regard their reflections as other animals rather than images of themselves. They may try to fight with their reflection immediately. But elephants are capable of recognizing themselves in a mirror.
When it comes to social intelligence, elephants are also amazingly outstanding! They care deeply for and protect one another within their family groups. Elephants commonly work together to access and share resources like food and water or to protect each other from enemies. In addition, elephants are expert at communication. They use all their senses—hearing, sight, smell, taste, and touch when interacting with each other. Their emotional range is also impressive. They will even get into deep sorrow when a close companion or family member dies.
It turns out that elephants are masters ot using tools like rocks and tree branches for very complex purposes! Their strong, flexible trunks are a huge help to them. Researchers have observed elephants using branches to knock fruits and leaves out of trees so they and their group members can eat them. The use of tools is a key determinant (决定因素) of animal intelligence, as it takes a highly intelligent animal to figure out and remember how to use them.
1. What lead to elephants’ high intelligence?| A．Large powerful brains. | B．Unique body structures. |
| C．Excellent surviving skills. | D．Neurons similar to humans’. |
| A．It is far from true. | B．It really makes sense. | C．It remains to be proved. | D．It is of great significance. |
| A．Social behavior. | B．Use of tools. | C．Response speed. | D．Self awareness. |
| A．Three. | B．Four. | C．Five. | D．Six. |
7 . Environmental restoration projects in Shaanxi province! Qinling Mountains were not conducted in a timely manner, a central government inspection team has revealed, urging provincial government departments to better shoulder their environmental protection responsibilities.
The Qinling Mountains are a geographically important north-south boundary in China and home to more than 2, 600 plant species and 300 animal species including giant pandas. In the last couple of decades, the Qinling Mountains have attracted many investment projects due to their rich natural and historical resources, dotting the area with hundreds of small coal and mineral mines, which led to serious damage to the local environment.
In December 2019, the provincial government banned all exploring and mining activities in key protected areas of the mountains and told enterprises already established there to gradually leave. “After 169 mining companies departed, environmental restoration was conducted slowly, “the inspection team told the provincial government. “The target of restoring 1,000 hectares of abandoned mines by 2020 has yet to be achieved.”
It said 64 tailings ponds in the area have not been closed as required, while the soil and rocks removed from some abandoned mines are illegally occupying nearby forests or grassland. The inspection team also noted other environmental problems in Shaanxi, such as the illegal us of underground water and pollution along the Yellow River due to the improper treatment of pollutant discharges from nearby mines and factories.
“The provincial government should maintain a firm attitude to safeguard Qinling, the bio-safety barrier in northern China, and put environmental protection work into practice, “the team said. It also stressed the important role environmental protection along the Yellow River plays in the country’s high-quality development and urged the provincial government to better perform its duties in protecting water resources.
1. What is a major cause of the environmental problem in Qinling Mountain?| A．Massive mining activities. | B．Poor geographical conditions. |
| C．Illegal discharge of pollutants. | D．Improper use of underground water. |
| A．Removing soil and rocks. | B．Banning investment projects. |
| C．Departing mining companies. | D．Limiting pollutant discharges. |
| A．Effective but slow. | B．Timely and efficient. |
| C．Illegal and unreliable. | D．Costly but successful. |
| A．The importance of wildlife conservation. | B．An introduction to an eco-friendly policy. |
| C．An expectation for local economic development. | D．The measures on provincial mountain restoration. |
8 . Bergl doesn’t consider himself the next Thomas Edison, He’s just a man loving animals, Africa and adventure, Yet, Bergl might have invented a tool as great as the light bulb (灯泡) ―a tool that uses modern-day technology to solve an almost prehistoric (史前) problem.
The tool is called the SMART. It is designed to be waterproof (防水的) , shockproof and poacher (偷猎者) proof. Bergl worked with worldwide wildlife groups to develop it in 2011. Since then it has been seen in more than 55 countries where poachers have forced the best-known but most endangered animals to nearly die out .
SMART works as a very simple smart phone―it lets the user record what they see, like animal sightings. changes in animals and illegal activities If a park ranger (管理员) sees something that is very important, that information can be sent to the cloud (云) and sent out to the base camp so they can take action and stop the killing
Bergl and his workmates travel to African wildlife reserves now and then They teach park rangers in some of the most remote countries how to use SMART. “SMART makes collection of information easier It allows us to pay attention to the things that really important. according to what the information is telling an,”Aid Skim Young, manager of the Etosha National park in Namibia, “thanks to SMART, most of Africa’s endangered animals seem to be coming back.”
Bergl never plans to make money from his small but great invention. SMART is free and doesn’t even have a patents(专利).
1. What can we learn about SMART?| A．It looks like a light bulb. | B．It was invented by Bergl alone. |
| C．It is used to prevent pouching. | D．It can help deal with water problems. |
| A．How SMART was created | B．What SMART is like. |
| C．Why SMART got popular. | D．How SMART works. |
| A．It is very helpful. | B．It is easy to hold |
| C．It doesn’t cost much. | D．I will be used widely. |
| A．He dislikes taking risks in life. | B．He’s determined to succeed in life. |
| C．He’s a creative and giving person | D．He never wants to depend on others. |
9 . Light weight and complicated tracking devices have made it possible to study the behavior of birds in all kinds of useful ways, for example, helping keep them safe from ships or monito-ring their changing migration patterns in a warming world. For a research team in Australia, however these efforts haven't quite gone to plan, with a group of tagged magpies (喜鹊) promptly removing each other’s tracking devices.
The research was led by animal ecologists from the University of the Sunshine Coast, who were looking to studying the movement and social dynamics of Australian magpies. To do so, the team actually designed a new type of tagging solution in which a belt was used to secure the tracking device to the bird, allowing them to use one with a large enough battery and storage capacity, despite the relatively small size of the animal.
The tracking devices weighed less than a gram (0.03 oz) and were successfully fitted to five magpies, with the scientists excited to learn the answers to questions such as how far the magpies were traveling, and what their movement patterns and schedules looked like. But before long, the plans of the researchers were thwarted.
Within 10 minutes of fitting the final tracker, the team watched on as an adult female used her bill to remove the belt from a younger bird in the group. A few hours on, most of the other trackers had been removed. By day three, they were all gone. It’s unclear whether one bird was helping out all the others, or if they shared the unfastening responsibilities between the group, but this is the first instance the scientists know of where birds have cooperated to remove tracking devices, and the first example of altruism (利他主义) in magpies. It appears that the magpies see the trackers as a form of parasite (寄生虫) that needs to be removed. This very rare behavior is known as “rescuing”, and the scientists say the only similar example they have found in literature is a group of birds-Seychelles warblers-freeing one another from a pile of sticky seeds.
1. Why were tracking devices often used to help birds according to the text？| A．To search the ships for food. |
| B．To warn them of the warming world. |
| C．To help them avoid being injured by other animals. |
| D．To monitor their travelling according to the season. |
| A．The process of the experiment. |
| B．The background of the experiment. |
| C．The new objects of the experiment. |
| D．The special device of the experiment. |
| A．followed | B．prevented | C．discovered | D．questioned |
| A．It’s rare for the birds. |
| B．It was first observed by researchers. |
| C．It disappointed the researchers very much. |
| D．It shows that the birds are behaving similarly. |
10 . In the last two weeks, the only things that have been thrown by Esther Penarrubia have been a broken toy, an old T-shirt used to clean shoes, a balloon from a party and the backing from a sheet of stickers. Ms Penarrubia, who has a PhD in agricultural engineering, realized that her lifestyle was called “zero waste” after watching a TED talk in November 2015.
It was when Ms Penarrubia moved house that she decided to remove single-use plastic from her life to reduce her family’s waste and thus changed her lifestyle.
Bulk (批量) buying, reusing old materials, searching second-hand shops and minimizing products which use plastic have been the key factor to her lifestyle, which sees her family send just one piece of rubbish to landfill every fortnight. Ms Penarrubia tries to remove all plastic products but if she does purchase any, like olive oil, she will bulk buy in a five-litre bottle and will recycle when finished. This also applies to cleaning products. Glass jars and containers are repurposed after use and kitchen leftovers go in the compost (堆肥) bin. The family grow their own tomatoes, cabbages, broccoli and herbs at home and also have orange and apple trees, while she buys fresh fruit, vegetables and bread in bulk from local suppliers for the week.
Ms Penarrubia believes changing to a zero-waste lifestyle is easier and cheaper than per-ceived, but admits the challenging part in convincing others that it can be achievable. She said, “If you think and organize your buying habits, consume less things from better quality, choose reusable alternatives, buy everything you can in quantity from the second-hand market—then it’s not more expensive and you can save money. “Zero waste” culture doesn’t only consist of the reduction of our waste, it involves a more conscious lifestyle and way of consumption.
1. What has Esther thrown during the past two weeks？| A．A balloon and an old T-shirt. |
| B．A broken toy and a pair of shoes. |
| C．An old T-shirt and some stickers. |
| D．A balloon and some glass containers. |
| A．Two weeks ago. |
| B．After watching a TED talk. |
| C．When moving into the new home. |
| D．After running a second-hand shop. |
| A．By eating less. |
| B．By running a second-hand shop. |
| C．By recycling and shopping smartly. |
| D．By making all the daily goods by herself. |
| A．It’s too expensive. | B．It’s within easy reach. |
| C．It’s unlikely to work. | D．It’s much more demanding. |
