1 . Warmer oceans can cause coral (珊瑚) bleaching. Bleaching happens when the coral, colonies of tiny animals called polyps, lose colored algae (藻类) living in their bodies and turn completely white. Without the algae, the coral loses its main food source and can die.
In 2021, the United Nations reported a 14 percent loss of corals across the world largely from rising sea temperatures in the previous 13 years. Australia declared mass bleaching events in 2022 across large parts of the Great Barrier Reef, the fourth since 2016.
Reefs in Hawaii, Florida, and the Caribbean were all severely affected, but thankfully some coral areas were not. Scientists looked into the characteristics of these corals and their ecosystems to see how others could be protected. Warm water reefs in the tropics are the worst affected by bleaching, but they also contain corals with better heat resistance.
Research is focused on finding genes for heat tolerance so that they can be passed on to future generations. Biologists mix corals that are more resilient to higher temperatures with those that are not and the resulting hybrid generation has a better chance of survival.
Researchers in Florida’s reefs have been using ocean nurseries to replant coral with batches that contain genes resistant to heat, acidification, and disease. Those areas have recovered within a year.
Other projects like Revive and Restore are using methods like preserving older coral populations’ sperm and eggs (biobanking) and using corals with better adaptability characteristics in breeding. The project also believes that boosting biodiversity by restoring (恢复) seabirds to islands, and ridding them of invasive species like rats, helps coral reefs thrive.
Ultimately, scientists say that without a serious reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, 99 percent of the world’s coral reefs will be gone by the end of the century. There is a limit to how quickly coral can adapt, especially given the rate of climate change. Computer simulations have shown that mild or moderate warming allows coral to adapt, but if temperatures rise rapidly then extinction is certain.
1. What mainly causes coral bleaching?| A．Loss of algae. | B．Lack of food. |
| C．Warm oceans. | D．Ocean pollution. |
| A．Coral reefs in tropics are easier to bleach. |
| B．Some corals are found better to resist heat. |
| C．Coral reefs in some areas are badly affected. |
| D．Ecosystems in some coral areas are destroyed. |
| A．Breeding hybrid generation with heat resistance. |
| B．Replanting batches of corals containing diseases. |
| C．Restoring seabirds of islands and invasive animals. |
| D．Setting no limitation of greenhouse gas emissions. |
| A．Botany. | B．Culture. | C．Nature. | D．Education. |
2 . As a young girl growing up in France, Sarah Toumi dreamed of becoming a leader who could make the world a better place. Her passion to help others was awakened when, from the age of nine, she accompanied her Tunisian father to his birthplace in the east of the country during holidays. There she organized homework clubs and activities for children.
Toumi witnessed first-hand the destructive effect of desertification (沙漠化). “Within 10 years rich farmers became worse off, and in 10 years from now they will be poor. I wanted to stop the Sahara Desert in its tracks.” A decrease in average rainfall and an increase in the severity of droughts have led to an estimated 75 percent of Tunisia’s agricultural lands being threatened by desertification.
Toumi recognized that farming practices needed to change. She is confident that small land areas can bring large returns if farmers are able to adapt by planting sustainable crops, using new technologies for water treatment and focusing on natural products and fertilizers rather than chemicals.
In 2012, Toumi consolidated (巩固) her dream of fighting the desert. She moved to Tunisia, and set up a programme named Acacias for All to put her sustainable farming philosophy (理念) into action. “I want to show young people in rural areas that they can create opportunities where they are. Nobody is better able to understand the impact of desertification and climate change than somebody who is living with no access to water.”
By September 2016, more than 130, 000 acacia trees had been planted on 20 pilot farms, with farmers recording a 60 percent survival rate. Toumi estimates that some 3 million acacia trees are needed to protect Tunisia’s farmland. She expects to plant 1 million trees by 2018. In the next couple of years, Toumi hopes to extend the programme to Algeria and Morocco.
1. How did Toumi’s holiday trips to Tunisia influence her?| A．They made her decide to leave the country. |
| B．They helped her better understand her father. |
| C．They aroused her enthusiasm for helping others. |
| D．They destroyed her dream of being a teacher. |
| A．Low rainfall. | B．Soil pollution. | C．Cold weather. | D．Forest damage. |
| A．To create job opportunities for young people. |
| B．To help the children obtain a basic education. |
| C．To persuade the farmers not to use fertilizers. |
| D．To promote the protection of their farmland. |
| A．Saving Water in Tunisia | B．Holding back the Sahara |
| C．Planting Trees of Native Species | D．Fighting Poverty in North Africa |
| A．The one with the white face. |
| B．The one with two black legs. |
| C．The one beside the black horse. |
4 . The giant African land snail (GALS) has returned to Florida for a third time. On June 23, 2022, Florida officials reported that the snails had been found in the New Port Richey area of Pasco County.
To stop the snails from spreading to other areas, officials have asked Pasco County residents not to move any soil or yard waste and to call a special hotline for any sightings. Specially-trained dogs have also been brought in to sniff out the snails. The areas where the snails have been found will be treated with a special pesticide for 18 months. Florida officials also intend to monitor the sites for two years after the last snail has been found.
Giant African land snails are one of the most destructive snails in the world. The fist-sized snails are native to East Africa. They consume over 500 plant and tree species. While they prefer to eat fruit and vegetables like beans, cucumbers and melons, the animals are not fussy (挑剔). They will eat ornamental plants, tree bark and even paint on houses! The animals also pose a serious health risk to humans by carrying the parasite (寄生). They multiply rapidly, producing about 1,200 eggs in a single year. This makes it challenging to control their population.
Greg Hodges, the assistant director of the state's division of plant industry, says the latest GALSs differ from' the ones previously found. They have light cream-colored bodies. “The populations that we coped with before had dark gray to brown bodies,” he explains. “This kind of cream-colored snails is very common in the pet trade in Europe.”
The officials are not sure how the snails got here this time. But Florida Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried says, “Because agriculture is such a prominent part of our economics in the state, it is so imperative that we get in front of these things. Let me assure you: we will get rid of these snails. It is not a question of if; it’s just when.”
1. What have people in Pasco County been expected to do when they spot the GALSs?，| A．Clean up soil and waste. | B．Call the hotline to report. |
| C．Use dogs to sniff out the snails. | D．Spray pesticides to kill the snails. |
| A．They grow naturally in Florida. | B．They rely on a single food source. |
| C．They do not cause harm to humans. | D．They have strong reproductive abilities. |
| A．Confident. | B．Doubtful. | C．Uncaring. | D．Worried. |
| A．Florida’s Battle against The GALS Continues |
| B．Various Measures to Get Rid of The GALS |
| C．The Most Destructive Snail in the World |
| D．Great Threat to Florida’s Agriculture |
For protecting endangered neighbors, pandas make unreliable umbrellas.
Like many undergraduate biology students, Wang Fang was taught that pandas are a prime example of
In fact, the story is much
Panda conservation, on its own,
All of those efforts focused simply not on other species,
6 . A Spanish project is attempting to 3D print coral reefs (珊瑚礁) to provide habitat for fish and protection for beaches and coastal communities at risk from rising seas and other damage.
Coral reefs are massively decreasing globally, and some scientists say we could lose 70-90% of our reefs due to warming ocean waters. That has all kinds of serious consequences because a quarter of the world’s fish live in and around reefs, reefs are critically important protectors of beach communities threatened by high waves and tides, and they support a massive amount of biodiversity. That led marine biologist Lizzie Fane and her co-founder Alfred Martel, a computer scientist, to start Coastruction, a non-profit organization.
“Even if you start on a small scale (规模) ... a square kilometer already, it could have a great impact,” Martel says. “It could really protect a coast, a beach, or an area where there is a community living and they need protection because the sea is rising.”
Being able to 3D print is important, because you match individual sites. Every location is different with different coral species. “It’s like everybody has a different house,” Fane says. “You can take into account habitat requirements of not just the coral but also the fish that live nearby.”
Their current technology can print various shapes. The result can be an amazingly natural-looking man-made rock with plenty of corners for both coral and other fish to attach themselves and make homes.
The Coastruction founders don’t think they can possibly meet the global demand, so their goal is to provide the tools — like the 3D printer — for local people and design the technology to use cheap and locally-available materials to create the artificial coral reefs. No high temperatures or chemical additives are required, and any loose powder or sand material not used in one print will be used in the next. The 3D printer works on-site, so there’s no transport of finished blocks required.
1. What does the underlined word “That” in paragraph 2 refer to?| A．The biodiversity of coral reefs. |
| B．The reduction in coral species. |
| C．The protection coral reefs provide. |
| D．The loss of global coral reefs. |
| A．3D-printed reefs can hardly save oceans. |
| B．Small actions can make a lot of difference. |
| C．Small-scale production of reefs is a drop in the ocean. |
| D．3D-printed reefs fail to provide perfect fish habitat. |
| A．It can just print regular-shaped reefs. |
| B．It can use any material to produce reefs. |
| C．It can create life-like reefs. |
| D．It can meet the global demand for reefs. |
| A．Adapting their technology to local conditions. |
| B．Putting their reefs into mass production. |
| C．Transporting finished reefs to where they are needed. |
| D．Adding chemicals to reefs to make them colorful. |
7 . Next time you’re having trouble solving a tricky puzzle, consider asking a nearby bumblebee.
A new study in the journal PLOS Biology finds that bumblebees can learn certain behaviors from each other, suggesting these social insects have a capacity for what we humans call “culture.”
In the past couple of decades, a growing body of evidence has shown that animals like chimps and birds show behaviors of learning. If what they learn lasts for a long time, it turns into a tradition. And culture is made up of multiple traditions. “Bumblebees, though, have some of the most complex behavioral abilities, nobody’s really thought to look at culture in such insects and generally assume they’re mostly driven by inborn factors instead,” says Alice Bridges, a behavioral ecologist at Anglia Ruskin University in England.
To prove them wrong, Bridges built a puzzle box, whose base held the reward: a drop of super sweet sugar water. The box was designed with a rotating (旋转) top that can be rotated by pushing either on a red tab clockwise or a blue tab anti-clockwise. Some bees were trained to push the red tab to get the sugar water while others pushed the blue one. Then, these tutor bees were placed inside different colonies (蜂群), along with the puzzle boxes.
The experiment ultimately played itself out. In colonies where the tutor bee had originally learned to push the red tab, the other bees in the colony usually pushed the red tab. In colonies where the tutor bee was trained to push the blue tab, their fellow bees also tended to do the same. In contrast, in the control groups without tutors, the bees sometimes learned how to open the boxes, but most of them would do it once or twice and then never again. “They perhaps hadn’t quite made the link between their behavior and the reward,” Bridges supposes.
“Many of us consider ourselves to be rather special…because we have culture, we can learn and we’re social,” Bridges says. “But now it turns out that even the bee also has culture, which is an uncomfortable truth: human culture, once thought unique, does not emerge ‘out of the blue’ but has obviously built on deep evolutionary foundations.
1. What is people’s common attitude to bumblebees having culture?| A．Positive. | B．Indifferent. | C．Interested. | D．Doubtful. |
| A．To test their learning capability in new settings. |
| B．To see if they will spread the secret of the boxes. |
| C．To evaluate their ruling power in various groups. |
| D．To observe if they will share their food with peers. |
| A．Its appeal to the public. | B．Implications on cultural origins. |
| C．Its practical application. | D．Suggestions for future directions. |
| A．Human Culture Is Losing Its Uniqueness |
| B．Bee’s Behavior Builds on Biological Factors |
| C．Culture May Be Present Among Bumblebees |
| D．Animals’ Evolution May Start From Colonies |
8 . Deforestation is the purposeful clearing of forested land. Throughout history and into modern times, forests have been cut to make space for agriculture and raising animal, and to obtain wood for fuel, manufacturing, and construction.
Deforestation has greatly changed landscapes around the world. About 2,000 years ago, 80 percent of Western Europe was forested; today the figure is 34 percent. In North America, about half of the forests in the eastern part of the continent were cut down from the 1600s to the 1870s for wood and agriculture. China has lost great expanses of its forests over the past 4,000 years and now just over 20 percent of it is forested.
Today, the greatest amount of deforestation is occurring in tropical rainforest, aided by extensive road construction into regions that were once almost inaccessible. Building roads into forests makes them more accessible for exploitation. Slash-and-burn agriculture is also a big contributor. With this agricultural method, farmers burn large numbers of trees, allowing the ash to fertilize the land for crops. Tropical forests are also cleared to make way for logging, cattle ranching, and oil palm and rubber tree plantations.
Deforestation can accelerate global warming and threaten the world’s biodiversity. More immediately, the loss of trees from a forest can leave soil easy to be eroded (侵蚀). This causes the remaining plants to become more vulnerable (脆弱的) to fire as the forest changes from being a closed, wet environment to an open, dry one.
While deforestation can be permanent, this is not always the case. There have, however, been increases in the size of some forests, often, because trees in those areas were replanted. Forests can also naturally recover themselves if the land is nurtured and protected from any further timber harvesting.
Slowing the loss of forests, experts say, will require countries and communities to develop effective forest management plans. Such plans, they say, must strike a balance between environmental protection and the economic needs of human society.
1. What can be inferred about deforestation from paragraph 1 and paragraph 2?| A．It only happened in Europe, America and China in history. |
| B．North America has the most serious deforestation problem. |
| C．It is a process of people destroying forests on purpose. |
| D．The problem was more serious in the past than now. |
| A．The amount of deforestation in tropical rainforest. |
| B．The reasons for deforestation in tropical rainforest. |
| C．The influences of building roads on tropical rainforest. |
| D．The harmful farming methods used in tropical rainforest. |
| A．Because it makes the environment dry and open. |
| B．Because it causes the loss of biodiversity. |
| C．Because it leads to warmer climate. |
| D．Because it pollutes the soil. |
| A．In a history book. | B．In a travel guide. |
| C．In a science magazine. | D．In a local newspaper. |
9 . Animals are gentle and often fall victim to cruelty because they trust and don’t fight back. We are so grateful to be able to save our animals and prove to them that the world can be good. Five years ago, six cows pushed through three fences and escaped from a slaughterhouse (屠宰场). However, sadly, they were finally rounded up and retuned to the slaughterhouse. Because it was national news, the community insisted they be allowed to live and even raised money for their freedom. The slaughterhouse owner agreed to release them to a sanctuary (庇护所), but no one came to get them.
Unwilling to see them die, Jay jumped on a red eye flight and got there in time to stop their slaughter. He took “The St Louis Six” to the hospital to be treated for their various wounds and infections. Later, I flew to St Louis to meet them. The minute I saw them, I knew they had a story to share with the world and that we had to help them.
In the coming months, we found a gorgeous property in St Louis and opened a Gentle Barn as home for The St Louis Six. Once scared and desperate to live, now the boys are trusting, loving, and giving hope to humans in our Cow Hug Therapy sessions where they wrap their necks around our guests who come to The Gentle Barm looking for hope.
Animals have always been my greatest teachers. They taught me whether we are trying to survive or looking for a safe home, sometimes we need to leave something behind to find a better way of life. We may be afraid of change, but only when we are brave enough to face the unknown and head out on our own can we realize our dreams!
1. Why did the slaughterhouse owner give up killing the cows?| A．The community urged him to do so. |
| B．Someone had already bought the cows. |
| C．He might get punished by the government. |
| D．The cows ran too far away from the slaughterhouse. |
| A．They left St Louis for Jay and the author’s hometown. |
| B．They were taken to another place and lived happily there. |
| C．They still often felt too scared and desperate to meet humans. |
| D．They couldn’t trust anyone even though they were treated with love. |
| A．Lucky. | B．Energetic. | C．Wealthy. | D．Sympathetic. |
| A．She wants to look for a safer home. | B．She hates changes in life very much. |
| C．She is inspired by the animals’ bravery. | D．She suggests animals be treated a8 teachers. |
10 . A remarkable new study on how whales behaved when attacked by humans in the 19th century has implications for the way they react to changes caused by humans in the 21st century.
The paper is authored by Whitehead and Rendellt at Dalhousie University and their research addresses an age-old question: if whales are so smart, why did they hang around to be killed? The answer? They didn’t. Using newly logbooks detailing the hunting of whales in the north Pacific, the authors discovered that within just a few years, the strike rate of the whalers’ harpoons (鱼叉) fell by 58%. This simple fact leads to an astonishing conclusion: that information about what was happening to them was being collectively shared among the whales, who made vital changes to their behaviour. They learned quickly from their mistakes.
“Sperm whales have a traditional way of reacting to attacks from orca (杀人鲸),” notes Whitehead. Before humans, orca were their only predators (捕食者), against whom sperm whales form defensive circles, their powerful tills held outwards to keep predators at bay, “But such techniques just made it easier for the whalers to kill them,” says Whitehead.
Sperm whales are highly socialized animals, able to communicate over great distances. Information about the new dangers may have been passed on in the same way they share knowledge about feeding grounds. They also possess the largest brain on the planet. It is not hard to imagine that they understood what was happening to them.
The hunters themselves realized the whales’ efforts to escape. They saw that the animals appeared to communicate the threat within their attacked groups. Abandoning their usual defensive formations, the whales swam upwind to escape the hunters, ships, themselves wind-powered.
Now, just as whales are beginning to recover from the industrial destruction by 20th-century whaling fleets, whose steamships and grenade harpoons no whale could escape from, they face new threats created by our technology. “They’re having to learn not to get hit by ships, cope with the depredations (劫掠) of long line fishing, the changing source of their food due to climate change,” Whitehead says. “The same sort of urgent social learning the animals experienced in the whale wars of two centuries ago is reflected in the way they negotiate today’s uncertain world.”
1. What is the new study mainly about?| A．Whales’ social lives. | B．Whales’ emotional intelligence. |
| C．Whales’ reaction to climate changes. | D．Whales’ behavior under human attack. |
| A．The wind in their favor. |
| B．Their powerful physical strength. |
| C．The shared ship attack information. |
| D．Their usual defensive formations. |
| A．To provide background information. |
| B．To summarize the previous paragraphs. |
| C．To introduce a new topic for discussion. |
| D．To add more related evidence for the study. |
| A．Pessimistic. | B．Optimistic. | C．Cautious. | D．Unclear. |
