1 . Diving in the ocean, marine biologist Erika Woolsey has seen how coral reefs (珊瑚礁) are being damaged by climate change. It has made her decide to find a way to share her experience —including those who can’t easily explore the ocean.
Through her non-profit, The Hydrous, Woolsey is using virtual reality to bring the ocean to everyone. Scientists, filmmakers and divers are taking people on immersive (沉浸式的) virtual dives, attracting attention to reef damage and expecting action to protect our sea. About 25% of marine species depend on coral reefs. However, climate change, pollution and overfishing have done harm to around half the world’s shallow water coral reefs.
Twenty years of underwater exploration has given Woolsey a detailed understanding of the dangerous situations facing reefs. “I’ve seen this first-hand shift. Healthy colourful coral reefs become what look like the moonscape step by step,” Woolsey says.
It is through this experience that The Hydrous team set out to recreate with their award-winning film Immerse. Intended to watch with a VR headset, viewers join Woolsey for a nine-minute guided virtual div e on the coral reefs, immersed in a 360-degree underwater view.
They swim alongside sea turtles and sharks before witnessing the worsening of the reefs. The experience often brings out strong feelings. “As soon as people take off that headset and look me in the eye, they want to tell me a story about their ocean experience,” Woolsey says. “It’s that human connection to our ocean that will solve our ocean problems.”
Woolsey hopes advances in camera technology will allow her team to take more and more people to places in the ocean that are underexplored and places further away from human civilization. They are developing a virtual experience that will put the people in the role of a marine biologist, carrying out biodiversity surveys underwater, and even transporting the viewers to space to monitor global sea surface temperatures.
1. Why did Erika Woolsey set up The Hydrous?| A．To collect money for ocean protection. |
| B．To let the public know about coral reefs better. |
| C．To help people enjoy the ocean’s beauty. |
| D．To encourage people to protect the ocean. |
| A．change. | B．experience. |
| C．material. | D．scene. |
| A．The story about the ocean. | B．The situation of coral reefs. |
| C．The connection with sea life. | D．The way to protect the ocean. |
| A．To bring more fun during the lockdown. |
| B．To train talents for environment protection. |
| C．To help people learn more about the ocean. |
| D．To discover more places that need protection. |
2 . Coral reefs (珊瑚礁) as underwater walls can help reduce the effects of hurricanes on coastal communities. This seems unbelievable. It is reported that scientists have discovered that coral reefs are even more effective than man-made sea walls under the water. However, coral reefs are especially easy to be influenced by climate change. Overfishing and pollution have also proved very dangerous to them. Since 1950, half of the world’s coral reefs have already been lost. To protect our communities and keep sea ecosystems alive, we need to protect coral reefs right away.
Let’s take a closer look at how coral reefs protect us from floods, and how scientists are 1restoring (修复) reefs.
The roles that coral reefs play as underwater walls have long been recorded by scientists. During a Category 3 hurricane in 2015 in Australia, the coral reefs effectively protected the eastern shoreline from flooding. In contrast, the western coasts without coral reefs suffered serious damage. The researchers observed that the shape of coral reefs can break the approaching waves. More recently, researchers at the University of Miami have reached the same conclusion. They used a special lab simulator (模拟装置) to recreate ocean conditions during a Category 5 hurricane. They found that coral reefs could reduce the impact of waves by up to 95 percent!
Because of higher ocean acidity (酸性) and temperature, coral reefs are disappearing and dying out. At the same time, climate change puts weakened coral reefs under more stress. The University of Miami researchers are testing to plant new coral reefs while others are actively looking for effective methods to reduce the acidity of sea water. The governments have also paid more attention to these actions and provided enough money for reef restoration. With these efforts, we may address climate threats to coral reefs and they can carry on protecting our communities.
1. What can we know about coral reefs?| A．They can reduce hurricanes. | B．They are faced with danger now. |
| C．They can’t effectively prevent floods. | D．They aren’t influenced by overfishing. |
| A．A terrible hurricane attacked Australia in 2015. |
| B．Scientists paid little attention to coral reefs before. |
| C．Coral reefs could reduce the impact of waves to 95%. |
| D．The eastern coasts of Australia were damaged seriously. |
| A．Doubtful. | B．Confused. | C．Positive. | D．Objective. |
| A．To introduce the growth of coral reefs. |
| B．To explain the functions of coral reefs. |
| C．To encourage people to plant more coral reefs. |
| D．To stress the importance of protecting coral reefs. |
3 . The Amazon rainforest spreads across nine South American countries but most of it (60%) is in Brazil. Brazilian scientists think they might have found a way to reverse the damage caused by deforestation and turn farmland back into forest. The secret lies in ancient local knowledge of soil.
Amazonian dark earth (ADE) is a thick, black soil found deep in the Amazon rainforest, and it could help restore forests around the world. ADE is a kind of compost — a soil made from dead plants and animals. Various kinds of compost are sold in gardening centers around the world, but ADE is unique. It was created by indigenous people (the descendants of people who lived somewhere before another culture arrived and took over) from the Amazon between 2,000 and 2,500 years ago. The Amazonian people, today known as Amerindians, created ADE using charcoal from fires, animal bones, food waste and poo. It contains microbes, including bacteria that help to turn chemicals in the soil into useful nutrients that feed plants and trees.
Vast areas of the Amazon have been cut down, mostly to make way for grassland for raising cattle. Scientists are looking for a way to turn grassland back into rainforest and revive forest ecosystems. These support thousands of animal and plant species, many of them unique to the area. Forests also absorb lots of carbon dioxide, a gas that cause climate change.
To see if the Amazon’s special soil could help, the scientists grew grasses and trees in ADE, regular earth and a mixture of both. Trees grown in ADE were up to six times taller than those in regular soil. ADE takes hundreds of years to create, so the scientists can’t simply make more. Team member, Dr. Siu Mui Tsai, said that instead they want to try and “copy its characteristics”, especially its helpful microbes, and see if it could help to restore natural habitats.
1. What are Brazilian scientists trying to do?| A．To bring forests back. | B．To measure damage. |
| C．To reduce farmland. | D．To dig out ancient soil. |
| A．Dead plants. | B．Animal bones. | C．Food waste. | D．Bacteria inside. |
| A．The reasons for cutting down forests. | B．The benefits of raising cattle. |
| C．The significance of forest ecosystems. | D．The influence of climate change. |
| A．Amazonian dark earth is helpful to microbes. |
| B．Amazonian dark earth is produced in large quantities. |
| C．Microbes are beneficial to the revival of forests. |
| D．Microbes are the characteristics of the natural habitats. |
4 . This summer, daytime temperatures topped 100 degrees for a full month in northwest China. Southern Europe experienced waves of 100-plus degree days. Heat waves show a serious reality: human-driven climate change is making extreme heat worse worldwide. But health-threatening heat isn’t the only result of record-breaking weather: air pollution happens when the temperatures rise according to a new report from the World Meteorological Organization.
The new report, which focuses on 2022, shows the growing risk of air pollution connected to wildfires. Hotter temperatures increase the risk of large the risk of large, hot-burning fires, which can pump enormous plumes of smoke into the air. That smoke causes health problems near the fire but also for people thousands of miles downwind.
Extreme heat, also drives up the likelihood of drought, which in turn makes big dust storms more likely. Great clouds of fine dust blew off major deserts last year, particularly affecting the Arabian Peninsula region. Southern Europe also got hit by a major dust storm after a heat wave baked the deserts of northern Africa in the summer.
“That’s a very bad combination of conditions,” says Julie Nicely, an atmospheric chemist at the University of Maryland, who worked on the report. That mix is particularly dangerous for elderly people, or people with breathing sensitivities. “That is very bad for the lungs and the cardiovascular (心血管),” she says.
Air pollution levels have dropped in the past few decades in response to environmental regulations like the Clean Air Act in the United States. Ozone pollution (臭氧污染), however, remains a problem. The report authors point out that the extra heat in the atmosphere driven by climate change overpowers even the gains made by strict environmental protections. The authors suggested focusing on the importance of slowing or changing human-caused climate change as quickly as possible.
“Climate change and air quality cannot be treated separately. They go hand in hand and must be solved together to break this cycle,” WMO Secretary General Petteri Taalas said in a press release.
1. Why is the extreme weather in northwest China and southern Europe mentioned in Para l?| A．To introduce the topic. |
| B．To show the serious situation. |
| C．To warn people of the bad weather. |
| D．To compare two countries’ weather. |
| A．Air pollution is likely to be solved in the future. |
| B．Climate change and air quality are closely connected. |
| C．It’s no use slowing or changing human-caused climate change. |
| D．People’s efforts to protect the environment make no difference. |
| A．It deals with the air pollution completely. |
| B．It makes a big difference to the air problem. |
| C．It has made the problem of air pollution worse. |
| D．It is partly effective in dealing with air pollution. |
| A．A science magazine. |
| B．A travel brochure. |
| C．A research paper. |
| D．An encyclopedia. |
5 . On Saturday, August 24, 1918, it was raining cats and dogs and thundering over a city called Sunderland on the northeast coast of England. The storm lasted for only about ten minutes. People were surprised to see that it was not just rainwater falling from the sky. There were fish falling down, too! People came out to find out what was happening. They could not believe their own eyes. There were thousands of fish—sand eels (沙鳗)—lying on the ground. They were about seven centimeters long, and all were frozen dead.
Sand eels swim together in large groups, often in sandy water, and are often found in large numbers in the North Sea, which reaches out to the east of Sunderland. How was it possible for these sand eels to fall from the sky and land on Sunderland?
Scientists believed the heavy thunderstorm that afternoon may have caused a waterspout (水龙卷). Waterspout s can be formed when strong winds move quickly in a circle over water. They are so powerful that anything less than one meter in length can be taken into them and forced into the clouds. The clouds carry whatever has been taken into them for long distances —sometimes over 150 kilometers. It’s very cold up there and everything soon freezes.
For hundreds of years there have been reports of small animals being taken into the sky through waterspouts. In 2009, dead tadpoles rained down on the city of Nanao in Japan. In 2012, fifty kilos of prawns fell from the sky over Sri Lanka. In 2017, fish fell on the coastal city of Tampico in Mexico.
It must be a very strange experience to see fish raining down on you. It would probably hurt if one fell on your head! With climate change and many reports of terrible storms, will the time ever come when it may really begin to rain cats and dogs?
1. What do we know about the sand eels that landed on Sunderland?| A．They were few in number. | B．They came in different sizes. |
| C．They were still alive when landing. | D．They probably came from the North Sea. |
| A．Clouds. | B．Waterspouts. | C．Sand eels. | D．Thunderstorms. |
| A．To stress the environment is not pleasant in Japan. |
| B．To introduce waterspouts can reach as far as Japan. |
| C．To show that raining sea animals is not new in history. |
| D．To explain different animals can fall in different countries. |
| A．Health. | B．Environment. | C．Wild animals. | D．Travel safety. |
6 . Cows produce much methane (甲烷) the world’s second worst greenhouse gas, as they break down the grass. They are a large source of the greenhouse gases that are driving climate change. Now scientists have shown the pollution from cows can be reduced by adding a little seaweed (海藻) to their food.
Recently, the researchers from the University of California studied 21 cows on a farm for about five months. They taught the cows to get their food from inside a special hood, which allowed the scientists to know the amount of the methane the cows were giving off. They used a small amount of seaweed, which they mixed with the cows’ food.
The consequences were surprisingly good. In some cases, the cows produced 82% less methane. The improvement depended on the kind of food the cows were given. Even the worst-polluting cows produced 33% less methane. Over the five months, the scientists didn’t see any signs that the cows’ stomachs were getting used to the seaweed and starting to produce more methane again. What’s more, the cows that were fed seaweed gained just as much weight as the other cows.
But there are still some big problems with the idea of feeding cows seaweed. For one thing, there’s not enough seaweed to feed all of the cows in the world. So farmers would have to figure out a way to grow lots of seaweed. A bigger problem is that for most of their lives, cows live in the fields, where they eat grass. That means there’s no chance to feed them seaweed every day.
Still, as the study shows, something as simple as feeding cows seaweed can help reduce some of the pollution causing the climate crisis.
1. Why did the researchers carry out the study?| A．To improve the cows’ living conditions. |
| B．To test the effects of the seaweed. |
| C．To measure the amount of methane produced by cows. |
| D．To discover healthier grass to reduce the pollution from cows. . |
| A．The background of the subjects. | B．The process of the research. |
| C．The content of the experiment. | D．The results of the study. |
| A．Seaweed is pretty rare in the world. |
| B．It’s hard to mix seaweed with grass. |
| C．Cows can hardly have daily access to seaweed. |
| D．Cows fed with seaweed gained weight easily. |
| A．Doubtful. | B．Positive. | C．Unclear. | D．Negative. |
7 . Tips for Green Travel with Kids
Travelling doesn’t mean letting go of all the eco-friendly choices we work so hard to achieve in our daily life. Here are a few tips for green travel with kids.
Booking nonstop flights whenever possible will reduce carbon emissions (碳排放). If the closest local airport doesn’t have nonstop flights to a certain place, check with other local airports to see if nonstop flights are available.
It’s easy when travelling to pull in to fast food restaurants for snacks.
| A．Walking is good for your health. |
| B．Try to cut back to save water and energy. |
| C．But you can pack healthy food from home. |
| D．Travelling is a great chance to introduce your kids to the world. |
| E．Reusable water bottles are easy to bring along wherever you travel. |
| F．Save energy by turning off the hotel room lights when you head out for the day. |
| G．You might have to drive a bit farther, but saving on carbon emissions makes it worthwhile. |
8 . Humans are not the animal kingdom's only fashionistas. Tits ( ill雀) can be fashion followers, too, apparently. A latest study shows that, given the chance, they decorate their nests with this season's must-have colour.
Dr. Wild and Dr. Aplin were following up on a study published in 1934 by Henry Smith Williams, an American naturalist. He noticed that when he put various coloured balls of yarn (纱) out in his garden, almost always one and only one became popular that season for being included into local birds' nests. But which particular color was favoured varied from season to season. This suggested that the colour chosen by one of the early birds was spotted and copied by others.
Williams's work was, however, forgotten until they came across it while following up on a different study, published by a team at the University of Toulouse, suggesting fashion-following, too. Dr. Wild and Dr. Aplin therefore set out to re-run Williams's experiment, but this time to collect some actual numbers.
The birds they followed were part of a well-monitored population of blue tits in a wood near the institute. Most birds in this wood carried tracking devices fitted to them after their capture in mist nets. That allowed the institute's researchers to keep track of a vast number of individuals by recording their arrival at food containers throughout the wood. Instead of food, these containers were loaded with wool of different colors. Interestingly, researchers soon found that most nests of blue tits included only the color of the wool first chosen by a nestbuildcr.
Tits, then, do seem to be “on trend”, when it comes to nest-building materials. Why that should happen remains obscure. Dr. Wild and Dr. Aplin suspect the fashion leaders are older birds, and that evolution favours younger ones copying their elders since those elders have evidently survived what fortune has to throw at a tit. Williams’s original work, though, suggests such initial choices are at random-a bit like those of the leaders of human fashions.
1. What can we learn from Paragraph 2?| A．Dr. Wild and Dr. Aplin contributed to William's work. |
| B．Early birds' color preference was copied by their fellows. |
| C．The yam was the most popular material to decorate local birds' nests. |
| D．The color of the yam favored by local birds was fixed throughout the year. |
| A．They observed the blue tits. |
| B．They studied the habits of blue tits. |
| C．They adopted the data-collecting method. |
| D．They fitted tracking devices to food containers. |
| A．Hidden. | B．Evident. | C．Complicated. | D．Shallow. |
| A．Birds favor certain colors in decoration. |
| B．Young birds follow their elders in fashion. |
| C．Young birds are just as intelligent as people. |
| D．Birds are just as fashion-conscious as people. |
9 . Record fires sweeping across the Amazon this month have been catching global headlines as scientists and environmental groups are worried that they will worsen climate change and do damage to biodiversity (生物多样性).
As the largest rainforest in the world, the Amazon is often called “the lungs of the world”. It is also home to about 3 million species of plants and animals, and 1 million local people. The huge lands of rainforest play an important role in the world’s ecosystem because they take in heat instead of it being reflected back into the atmosphere (大气层). They also store carbon dioxide (二氧化碳) and produce oxygen, making sure that less carbon is given off, mitigating the effects of climate change.
“Any forest destruction is a harm to biodiversity and the people who use that biodiversity.” Thomas Lovejoy, an ecologist at George Mason University told National Geographic. The shocking result is that a lot of carbon goes into the atmosphere.” he stressed. “Facing the global climate change, we cannot afford more damage to a major source of oxygen and biodiversity. The Amazon must be protected,” UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said.
Data from the National Institute for Space Research (INPE) show that the number of forest fires in Brazil quickly increased by 82 percent from January to August this year from a year ago. A total of 71,497 forest fires were recorded in the country in the first eight months of 2019, up from 39,194 in the same period in 2018. INPE said. “It’s reported that the forest areas in the Brazilian Amazon have decreased something between 20 and 30 percent compared to the last 12 months,” Carlos Nobre, a researcher at the University of Sao Paulo, told German broadcaster Deutsche Welle.
Brazil owns about 60 percent of the Amazon rainforest, whose drop could have severe results for global climate and rainfall. The size of the area ruined by fires has yet to be determined. but the emergency has spread over Brazil’s borders, reaching Peruvian, Paraguayan and Bolivian areas.
1. What is the second paragraph mainly talking about?| A．The effects of climate change. | B．The role of the Amazon rainforest. |
| C．The results of the Amazon rainforest fires. | D．The causes of the decreasing biodiversity. |
| A．Reducing. | B．Causing. | C．Worsening. | D．Strengthening. |
| A．The biodiversity makes the rainforests unique. |
| B．The rainforest fires give rise to serious effects. |
| C．The global climate crisis brings more rainforest fires. |
| D．The dry weather leads to the rainforest fires. |
| A．Sports and music. | B．Science and technology. |
| C．Nature and geography. | D．Business and culture. |
10 . Much like people whose relatives or friends have died, orphaned (成为孤儿的) elephants get by with a little help from their friends, according to a study.
Scientists in the United States and Kenya analysed stress hormones (激素) in the baby elephants whose mothers had died, expecting to find higher levels. Instead, the support of their peers appeared to reduce the orphans’ level of anxiety.
The study, published last week in the journal Communications Biology, concluded that social relationships have a psychological impact on the young elephants. Elephants have strong familial and group ties. Before the age of nine, baby elephants rarely move away more than 30 feet (nine metres) from their mothers, and even a few hours of separation lead to joyous reunion. The bond between female elephants and their young has long been thought to reduce stress.
Expecting to find that the orphaned elephants, which tend to die early at a higher rate than those whose mothers are still alive, would be more depressed, the team analysed stress hormone levels in the waste matter of 36 young elephants in the nature reserves in northern Kenya between 2015 and 2016. Twenty-five of the elephants had lost their mothers to drought or hunting between 2009 and 2013, when a rise in the demand for ivory left many elephants on the reserves motherless.
However, the researchers were surprised to find that long-term stress hormone levels were similar among orphans and elephants with living mothers. Jenna Parker, the study’s main author and a professor at Colorado State University, said their unexpected resilience is directly linked to social support from other elephants, specifically companions of a similar age. Those with more “friends” had significantly lower stress hormone levels. The results may encourage elephant orphanages to pair up animals to help them to recover from loss and adapt to future threats.
It could be a timely move as interactions between humans and elephants are on the rise, thanks in part to drought related to climate change. Experts say the increased conflict is a threat to Kenya’s 36,000 strong elephant population.
1. What did the scientists focus on about orphaned elephants in the study?| A．Their peers. | B．Their family. | C．Their psychology. | D．Their growth. |
| A．Separation is necessary for younger elephants. |
| B．Young elephants are attached to their mothers. |
| C．Younger elephants are fond of wandering alone. |
| D．Female elephants dominate young elephants’ life. |
| A．Difference. | B．Anxiety. | C．Recovery. | D．Result. |
| A．Orphaned Elephants Find Relief in Friends. |
| B．Elephants Have a Strong Bond with Mothers. |
| C．Stress Levels are Higher in Young Elephants. |
| D．Orphaned Elephants Have Been Suffering a Lot. |
