1 . “There’s not any more water out there and what water is out there is becoming really expensive. So, let’s look at how we’re using it now,” said John Berggren. He is a water policy expert with Western Resource Advocates, a non-profit group.
Berggren’s organization supports an effort by Colorado’s lawmakers to launch a statewide turf (草皮) replacement program. Turf is land covered with grass. The program aims to pay home and business owners to replace their grass with other plants and landscapes as a way to deal with the state’s dry climate.
The Las Vegas Valley has always been dry. The desert area has only 10.7 centimeters of rainfall a year. The people who live there take 90 percent of their water from the Colorado River. The rest comes from underground water. Berggren said that in Las Vegas one tenth of a square meter of grass can use 276 liters of water every year. Replacing that grass with native plants and landscaping can cut that to 82 liters or less.
Berggren added that the replacement would be completely voluntary. Water officials launched turf replacement program in 1999. The program offered residents (居民) $4 for every square meter of lawn (草坪) that they replaced. Valley residents, apartment managers and business owners took the government’s money and replaced their grasses with rocks and desert plants. Water officials increased the offer to $10 for each square meter in 2003, then $20 in 2007. Now water officials offer $30 for each square meter up to 929 square meters.
It paid off. Home and business owners in the Las Vegas Valley have removed more than 18.5 million square meters of turf, which has saved about 741 billion liters of water since the program started. In Colorado, since launching in 2018, the program has helped save about 145 million liters of water. The turf replacement program in Castle Rock has also saved millions of liters. The city has reduced residential water use by 7 percent since starting its replacement program in 2009.
1. What is the program in Colorado intended to do?| A．Save water. | B．Replace turf. |
| C．Turn the desert into grassland. | D．Make the area more beautiful. |
| A．The difficulty of getting water. | B．The present state of water wasting. |
| C．The dry climate and desert environment. | D．The need and reasons to carry out the program. |
| A．The program has won support from all residents. |
| B．Residents replacing turf are offered more money than before. |
| C．Water officials save more money by launching the program. |
| D．It totally depends on the government to carry out the program. |
| A．Costly. | B．Popular. | C．Fruitless. | D．Effective. |
1. What makes it easier for scientists to count the number of elephants?
| A．Few trees. | B．Few elephants. | C．Clearer footprints. |
| A．About 50,000. | B．About 60,000. | C．About 95,000. |
| A．The bad weather. | B．The lack of food. | C．Land clearing. |
3 . A new study was published last week in The Journal of Heredity. American researchers said that two baby males, called chicks, which hatched in 2001 and 2009 from unfertilized eggs, were related to their mothers. But neither chick was related to a male. It is the first report of asexual reproduction (无性繁殖) in California condors (秃鹰).
Reproduction from an unfertilized egg can happen in other animals such as sharks and bees. But in birds, it usually only takes place when females are not around males. In this case, each mother condor had bred with males before. The two mothers involved in the research had produced 34 chicks. Each was with a fertile male condor at the zoo when they produced the eggs without male help.
The researchers said they believe it is the first case of asexual reproduction in any bird species where the female had access to a mate. Olivia Ryder leads genetics work for the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance. She is also the study’s co-writer. She said the findings raise questions about whether this kind of reproduction is happening in other species.
California condors are the largest flying birds in North America. They used to be found throughout the West Coast. But only 22 remained in the 1980s when the U.S. government captured condors and placed them in zoos to increase their numbers. About 160 were raised at the San Diego Zoo and Safari Park. There are now more than 500 California condors, including more than 300 that have been released into the wild in California, Arizona, Utah and Mexico.
California condors can live up to 60 years. But the two male birds that hatched in 2001 and 2009 were not healthy. One was less than 2 years old when he died. The other lived less than eight years.
1. What is known about asexual reproduction from the text?| A．It is related to males or females. |
| B．It can happen in animals other than condors. |
| C．It is related with female condors at their first birth. |
| D．It happens when female condors are without males’ accompany. |
| A．Their being endangered. | B．Their general information. |
| C．Measures to save the species. | D．Achievements of saving the species. |
| A．It happens only in a few species. |
| B．It goes against traditional scientific rules. |
| C．Scientists attach little significance to this discovery. |
| D．The two condors from unfertilized eggs have a shorter lifespan. |
| A．Whether this kind of reproduction is happening in other species. |
| B．How asexual reproduction can be used to save endangering species. |
| C．Whether two mothers involved produced the eggs without male help. |
| D．Why the two condors from unfertilized eggs have a much longer lifespan. |
Your food is at its best when it’s on your plate, ready
Saving food
The average family of four can save just over £60 per month by reducing their food waste.
We believe that every person has a part
5 . It’s a hot summer afternoon in St Louis and Dawn Weber’s yard is filled with life. A catbird flies over groups of bees as Dragonflies skip across a pond. At just over a quarter of an acre, the carpet of native plants around Ms. Weber’s house is home to about 38 species of insects and 99 species of birds. “I really enjoy seeing the life,” she says. “There’re about 300 species of plants in the yard.”
Ms. Weber is among the growing number of homeowners who have traded manicured lawns(修整的草坪) for native and wildlife garden. The trend follows growing awareness of the need for species conservation in local ecosystems.
“The plants and animals around us run the ecosystem,” says Doug Tallamy, professor at the University of Delaware. But he adds, “We’re losing our insects, and were losing our plants and losing our birds. This is a disaster. And it stems from the fact that we’ve taken away the native plants or used incorrect plants. Not all plants support the insects that run the food web s that feed the birds and everything else. This breakdown of the food web has led to what environmental experts call a mass extinction event.”
But conservation experts think anyone with a yard can be part of the solution. America has more than 40 million acres of land used as lawns. Although green lawns may look pleasing. Professor Tallamy calls them “dead scape” land that does not support biodiversity or the local ecosystem.
Native gardens of any size in residential (住宅的) areas form “conservation passages” that support local wildlife. Local insects depend on these conservation passages and in turn support creatures higher on the food chain. If you add all of the residential landscape, it’s far more than the national park systems combined. If enough people could devote part of their landscape to the native plants that have developed with the insects in their ecosystem, we could reduce the impact and maybe even stop the ma ss extinction.
1. What aspect does Paragraph 1 try to show about Dawn Weber’s yard?| A．Its diversity of species. | B．Its beautiful scenery. |
| C．Its abundant food supply. | D．Its popularity in St Louis. |
| A．Local creatures have died out. | B．Insects have ruined the food web. |
| C．Local plants have disappeared. | D．The balance among animals has failed. |
| A．To praise the efforts to protect the local wildlife. | B．To show the great potential of native gardens. |
| C．To explain the function of conservation passages. | D．To stress the advantage of the national park systems. |
| A．Building Your Own Conservation Areas | B．Local Lawns Are More Than Just a View |
| C．How to Recover Food Webs of Residential Areas | D．Native Gardens Are Repairing Local Ecosystem |
6 . Summer is by far my favorite season of the year. I love the warm temperature, the longer, sunnier days and the opportunity to spend more time by the lake. But my love for the season quickly ends when I think of mosquitoes (蚊子). While their bites alone can be annoying, it’s just infuriating when I come inside with several new bright-red welts (红肿) while my friends so kindly report how they don’t have a single one.
Why is that? It’s not that we’re particularly unlucky. There are actually scientific reasons why mosquitoes single out certain people.
Contrary to what you might think, mosquitoes don’t bite people for food—they feed on plant nectar (花蜜). Only female mosquitoes bite, and they do so to receive proteins from your blood needed to develop their eggs.
A common belief is that mosquitoes are attracted to certain blood types. While there are no firm conclusions as to which blood type is more attractive to mosquitoes, several studies have suggested that mosquitoes are not so attracted to people with blood group A. However, they find people with blood group O a little tastier.
Mosquitoes are highly visual hunters when it comes to finding a human to bite. Research has shown that mosquitoes are more attracted to the color black, but there has been little additional research into why this is the case.
Mosquitoes can smell out a person through the carbon dioxide given off when we breathe. Therefore, people who give off more of it—larger individuals and people who are breathing heavily when working out—are more attractive to a mosquito.
In a study, mosquitoes were observed to land on participants more frequently after they had drank a small amount of beer. Probably, mosquitoes are more attracted to people who have been drinking beer.
Mosquito bites are annoying. The best way to handle mosquito bites is not to get bitten in the first place.
1. What does the underlined word “infuriating” in Paragraph 1 probably mean?| A．Making somebody greatly amused. | B．Making somebody extremely angry. |
| C．Making somebody completely tired out. | D．Making somebody even more determined. |
| A．To spread certain diseases. | B．To enable them to fly around. |
| C．To hunt for food for themselves. | D．To provide proteins for their eggs. |
| A．A short and thin man in black. |
| B．A teenager fond of eating sweet food. |
| C．An overweight woman with blood group A. |
| D．A young man having just drunk lots of beer. |
| A．Treatment of mosquito bites. |
| B．Ways to prevent mosquito bites. |
| C．Why certain people get lots of mosquito bites. |
| D．Why mosquito bites are harmful to human beings. |
Lying in the west of Henan Province, the northwest of Dengfeng City, Mount Song is one of the Five Famous Mountains in China, and it is also called as Zhongyue, which
8 . A landfill(废物填埋地) of 42 million tires in the sands of Kuwait is finally being cleaned up and recycled. This news in itself would be a major relief to locals who have to suffer from the clouds of black smoke arising during fires. But the government isn’t stopping there. They are aiming to create a green city of 25,000 homes in line with a post-oil Persian Gulf, with a focus on sustainability and tourism.
The first step is to clear the ground. The Salmiya area, nicknamed “Rubber Mountain”, consists of hundreds of small piles of spent tires—a reaction(回应) from the one million cars which were added to Kuwait’s roads over the decade.
EPSCO Global General Trading has opened a recycling facility for the tires, where they’ve been collected, cut up, and pressed into other materials like tiling(铺地砖) and playground flooring. The plant opened in January of 2021, and exported the recycled material out to nearby gulf neighbors. In their place will be South Saad Al-Abdullah City, a green city characterizing a new era in the Middle-Eastern country.
“We have moved from a difficult stage that was characterized by great environmental risk,” says Oil Minister Mohammed al-Fares. “Today the area is clean and all tires have been removed to begin the launch of the project of Saad Al-Abdullah city.”
Expected to cos t €3.3 billion and require 30 years to complete, the city hopes to feature green technology, probably like the kind one can see in other cities on the Persian Gulf, both existing and not. Saudi Arabia is planning to build a zero-emissions, car-less future city that’s centered around access to big data rather than water or crops.
1. Why is the Salmiya area called “Rubber Mountain”?| A．It is rich in rubber. | B．It has too many waste tires. |
| C．It possesses more cars. | D．It has been a tradition. |
| A．Collect and bury them. | B．Cut up and burn abroad. |
| C．Make bricks and sell locally. | D．Process and move them away. |
| A．To express his joy. | B．To show his anxiety. |
| C．To stress the urgency. | D．To analyze the causes. |
| A．The Transformation of a Huge Landfill | B．Spent Tires, a Big Threat to the Environment |
| C．Kuwait Tire Mountain to Be into a Green City | D．The Salmiya Area’s Measures to Kick Pollution |
9 . Which streets have more shade? Or a drinking fountain? Now, residents in Barcelona have an app that can give you all the answers.
This app, Cool Walks, which only maps one neighborhood in Barcelona to date, uses a tool called Lidar to create a high resolution of ground elevation that is combined with sun data to figure out where the shady places are.
With the planet getting hotter, heat waves harm people more than any other climate risk. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, more than 11,000 Americans died from heat-related causes since 1979. Some populations, like seniors over 65 or people with respiratory(呼吸的) issues, are easily influenced by heat.
Today, heatwaves affect 200 million people in more than 350 cities around the world. Barcelona is just one of them. If the Paris agreement’s 1.5℃ climate change goal is not met, even more people will be impacted by the rising temperatures.
Barcelona is already working on ways to help ease the effects of global warming. The city created a 20-year Tree Master Plan, in 2017, to increase the proportion of land covered by trees from 25 percent to 35 percent and to provide residents with a green infrastructure(基础设施) and quality public spaces. Parks with trees are full of shade.
“Trees and broader green infrastructure are the most advanced technology known for easing the impact of our densifying and rapidly heating cities. City leaders should make that their priority in the first instance,” said Jon Burke.
This app is a good way for people to be able to function in a hotter city while long-term solutions like tree planting, reducing the number of cars on the roads, and green infrastructure are being carried out. Every city around the globe should have one.
1. What does the third paragraph mainly deal with?| A．The planet getting hotter. | B．The harm of climate risk. |
| C．The effect of heat waves. | D．The health of the seniors. |
| A．To show it is important. | B．To show it is well received. |
| C．To show most people obey it. | D．To show it’s tough to carry out. |
| A．To draw people’s attention. | B．To improve living conditions. |
| C．To reduce the use of electricity. | D．To create more public spaces. |
| A．Favorable. | B．Objective. | C．Doubtful. | D．Critical. |
If you want to hike alone in the woods, it’s always a good deal to bring along your best friend — the dog.
A hiker in Nevada recently learned that lesson the hard way. A 53-year-old man was hiking in the woods in Nevada County on the night of July 12 when he fell down a 70-foot embankment (路堤). He was badly injured, breaking his hip and ribs, but he managed to drag himself to a spot with cell service and call for help.
After getting cellphone reception, the wounded hiker, whose name was not released by authorities, phoned first responders at noon the following day asking for help and telling them about his broken bones. The man then covered himself in a camouflage tarp (伪装油布) and waited for help to arrive. His loyal friend, Saul, waited by his side.
Upon receiving the man’s emergency call, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection enlisted the help of the nonprofit Nevada County Sheriff’s Search and Rescue to locate and rescue the man.
Twenty-five members of the Nevada County Sheriff’s Search and Rescue organization set out to find the hiker, whose last GPS location was used to get to the general neighborhood, but with miles of huge wilderness around them, they worried it would take a long time to find him.
At about 7 p. m. on July 13, the search was still going on. “Having searching for the man for over seven hours, we were tired out and felt a bit disappointed,” said Dennis Haack, leader of the Search and Rescue team, “But I do put a lot of faith in our searchers because they’re extremely good at what they do.”
注意：
1. 续写词数应为150左右；
2. 请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
Suddenly, a black dog came into the sight of a group of rescuers.
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The hiking victim was put into a helicopter.
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