1 . The huge billboard at the side of the highway is no joke; transporting firewood in certain areas is a crime, punishable by a four-thousand-dollar fine. The reason? Emerald Ash Borer disease, or EAB disease, a new addition to the long list of dangerous foreign pest infestations（虫害）on American soil. It was in 2002 when the Emerald Ash Borer beetle（甲虫）was first discovered in Michigan. Not long after, the pest was found in Ohio. Originally from Asia, this green beetle probably found its way to North America through a wooden box made of ash wood and immediately settled into a local ash tree. In little time, the species managed to kill millions of ash trees.

To date, much work is underway to stop ash trees ending up in the same group as elm and chestnut trees, which are all dying out in many areas. Ash Borer Infestations are particularly troublesome because they are difficult to identify until the ash tree is heavily infested. In addition, other ash trees in the area surrounding the source will probably also be infested, making control a hard task.

Researchers are working on many issues related to the control and removal of this harmful beetle. For example, it has been discovered that Asian ash trees are not destroyed by this native borer. It may be that, Asian ash trees have developed genes（基因）to protect them from the insect; therein, perhaps, lies the secret to controlling this pest. Insecticide（杀虫剂）treatment is also being explored on several fronts. Research is underway to determine which insecticides are proving to be the most successful. The proper application of the insecticides is being debated.

However, all possible solutions require a great deal of study and research. In the meantime, careful steps must be taken. Methodical identification of infested trees is taking place. Identified trees are being cut down and destroyed to get rid of the beetle colonies（群）. In the end, this puts a huge drain（消耗）on city budgets, as tree removal can be extremely expensive.

Even though it will be expensive to deal with this problem in the short term, the costs of doing nothing could be far higher, since we could lose an entire species of tree.

1. What can we learn about the Emerald Ash Borer beetle?

A．It is a newly found species.

B．It can be used to fight foreign pest infestations.

C．It is native to North America.

D．It can cause damaging harm to American ash trees.

2. What is special about Ash Borer infestations?

A．They affect Asian ash trees most frequently.

B．They are difficult to identify and get rid of.

C．They break out at certain times every year.

D．They spread slowly in a small area.

3. What method is currently used to control EAB disease?

A．Gene activation.	B．Insecticide use.
C．Removing infested trees.	D．Introducing the beetle’s enemies.

4. Which of the following might the author agree with?

A．Healthy trees should be relocated and protected.

B．Protecting the ash tree should be done at any cost.

C．Government budget for tree removal should be cut.

D．Measures that have side effects should be avoided.

2 . Burning coal for energy adds planet-warming carbon dioxide(CO2) to Earth's atmosphere. As the planet heats up, experts warn that simply cutting greenhouse gas emissions（排放） will not be enough to avoid global warming. CO2 must also be remcved from the atmosphere.

Existing experimental machines that pull CO2 directly from the air are too expensive to be widely used. But a new effective technology to remove CO₂ already exists. It is not expensive and easy. It is forests. Planting trees and watching forests are effective ways to clean the air.

Forests used to cover large areas of the Appalachian Mountains in the eastern United States. In the state of West Virginia, coal mining left the land there bare, without trees. Over the years, coal mining and cutting forests took over 90 percent of the red spruce（云杉） forests.

Chris Barton works for the University of Kentucky. He started a group called Green Forests Work, aiming to put trees back on the roughly 400 , 000 hectares of land.

However, Barton explains the land has problems. "If you planted trees on these places, they just didn't grow. The ground was too hard. Water didn't infiltrate（渗透）. The trees can't root. Oxygen can't circulate in those environments. "Using heavy equipment, workers tear the ground. In this way, the trees put down roots.

Barton says not everyone believes the solution is a good idea. "We've had a lot of doubtful look at us twice from people. But after we do it, there's no question that it was the right thing to do. "And it has worked. Forests are coming back to the grounds.

Scientists say that, in West Virginia alone, restoring red spruce forests to the area could send what is equal to 56 million barrels（桶）of oil into the ground. But it will take time—a long time. Around the world, experts say, nature offers powerful tools to fight climate change. But patience is needed. Nature works, but slowly, in its own time.

1. What is the economical and effective way to remove CO₂ from the air?

A．Inventing new and powerful machines.

B．Cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

C．Making use of natural gases instead of coal.

D．Planting trees and protecting forests.

2. What does the underlined word "tear" in paragraph 5 probably mean?

A．Cry.

B．Repair.

C．Destroy.

D．Cover.

3. From the fifth paragraph we know that ________.

A．oxygen is not enough for trees to grow there

B．too many rocks had made it hard to plant trees

C．coal mining has spoiled the land through years

D．there is no water for trees to grow there

4. The last paragraph tells us that restoring the forest environment there is________.

A．a painful process

B．a slow process

C．a creative process

D．a learning process

3 . There’ s no place like home. It’ s the place where we’ re surrounded by our possessions and creature comforts. We purchase things to give our homes a personal touch. And one thing we’re buying more of is houseplants. But are these “living” additions to our homes good for us and the environment?

Houseplants, also known as pot plants, add a natural touch and they have the ability to brighten up a room on a budget. The Royal Horticultural Society found that nearly 72% of adults in the UK had a houseplant in their home, with this figure rising to 80% of 16-24 year olds. A fifth of owners also said they use plants in the home to boost their health and well-being. And average sales last year were up on the previous year.

It seems millennials (千禧代) are driving the growth in the sales of houseplants. More young people are living in flats without a garden. 24-year-old Daisy Hale said “being able to care for something but not having too much commitment—I guess that’s a classic millennial line—is ideal for my lifestyle.”

From hanging baskets, to cacti (仙人掌) and succulent ferns, the choice of vegetation is endless. They are easy to care for, and there have been unproven claims that they improve the air quality in our home. But whatever their benefits, there are now concerns that they might not be so good for the environment. Some are bought online and shipped from overseas. Fay Kenworthy, co-founder of PlantSwap, a community activity that encourages people to trade plants locally, said “this could defeat many local plants.”

But botanist James Wong argues that home delivery has less of an environmental impact than multiple trips to the garden center in a car. Although he’ s not too concerned about the environmental impact, others are worried about the plastic pots they are in and the type of peat (泥炭) that some of them are grown in. However, a sustainable approach to buying them may be the best way forward if we want to introduce some natural greenery into our homes.

1. What is the benefit of a houseplant?

A．A houseplant can cure people of many diseases.

B．A houseplant is ideal for millennials’ career.

C．A houseplant improve the water quality in our home.

D．A houseplant can beautify a room with little money.

2. Which of the following may Fay Kenworthy agree with?

A．The choice of vegetation is endless.	B．People should buy local plants.
C．It’s best to buy plants online.	D．Houseplants are hard to care for.

3. Where is the passage probably from?

A．A fashion magazine.	B．A tour brochure.
C．A scientific fiction.	D．A history book.

4. What is James Wong’s attitude towards home delivery of plants?

A．Negative.

B．Neutral.

C．Positive.

D．Not mentioned.

5. What is the best title of the passage?

A．Natural Greenery	B．Millennials’ Choice
C．Houseplants: Good or Bad?	D．Hanging Baskets or a Garden?

4 . 阅读下面短文，在空白处填入1个适当的单词或括号内单词的正确形式。

In today’s Science class, we learnt that human beings have five senses. Our teacher, Mr. Smith, asked us to find out    1    plants have senses, too. After some research, I found that,     2    (like) human, plants have only one or two senses.

Some plants can see the light from the sun, and grow towards    3    . What is    4    (amaze) is that plants    5    like eating small insects can sense the soft touches of the insects on their leaves. After they sense the insects, they move their    6    (leaf) all of a sudden to catch them. It has also been discovered that some plants can feel whether the animals around them want to hurt them or not. No one really knows how the plants can do this. The results of a recent experiment    7    (carry) out by some Italian and German scientists are amazing.

It    8    (observe) that when some plants sense dangerous insects, they give    9    a kind of smell for protection—the smell can attract other insects in the distance which can kill the dangerous ones.

I never    10    (know) plants were so clever.

5 . 听下面一段独白，回答以下小题。
1. What is the passage about?

A．Several women living under the sea.

B．Sea plants.

C．Sea animals.

2. What do the women want to find out?

A．How the sea animals live.

B．How the sea plants grow.

C．Both A and B.

3. How many days did the women live under the sea?

A．Five days.

B．Two weeks.

C．A week.

6 . 阅读下面材料，在空白处填入适当的内容(1个单词)或括号内单词的正确形式。

Food from the air

Everyone has seen plants growing, but have you ever thought     1     they get their food? In the seventeenth century, a European scientist     2     (call) Van Helmot asked this question. Like most people, he thought that plants must get their food from soil. However, Van Helmot decided       3     (test) the theory with experiments.

First, he dried some soil, put it into a pot and weighed it. Next, he weighed a small tree, planted it in the pot and added rain water. Then, he watered it     4     (regular) with rain water.

After five years, he removed the tree from the pot and weighed it again. He found that the tree had gained     5     huge amount of weight. When he weighed the soil, however, it was almost exactly the same as it had been five years    6    . So Van Helmot drew the    7    (conclude) that the tree grew by drinking water. Though it turned out to be wrong, he showed the importance of the use of scientific evidence to support ideas.

We now know that plants and trees make their own food. Their leaves, when exposed     8     the air and sun, are like factories    9     can change the energy from the sun into chemical energy. During this process (过程), oxygen and sugar     10     (produce). The oxygen is released back into the air, and the sugar is used by the plant as food.

7 . People often recommend planting trees to make cities greener, cleaner and healthier. But during heat waves, city trees can actually increase air pollution. Indeed, a new study finds that up to 60% of the ozone (臭氧) in a city’s air on hot days may have its origin in chemicals released by trees.

City trees offer a host of benefits. They provide cooling shade, absorb carbon dioxide, and also release oxygen into the air. But oxygen is far from the only gas that trees and certain other green plants release into the air. One of these chemicals is a hydrocarbon(碳氢化合物) that can react with burning pollutants, such as nitrogen oxides (氮氧化合物). The result is the formation of ozone which can cause airway diseases.

Galina Churkina works in Germany at Humboldt University of Berlin. She and her team wanted to explore how much chemicals released by trees could affect city air. To do this, the researchers turned to a computer. They asked it to model the likely reactions between plant chemicals and nitrogen oxides in air throughout the Berlin city area. To do that, the researchers fed in local weather data for two summers. One was 2006, when there was a heat wave. The other was 2014, when temperatures were mild.

An average daily high there in summer tends to be at roughly 25℃. On such a day, chemicals released by area greenery would likely have contributed to making about 6 to 20 percent of the ozone in the city’s air. But during a heat wave, when temperatures are more than 30℃ , tree-chemical emissions (发出物) are also high. As a result, they are now likely to be responsible for up to 60 percent of the ozone in air.

Churkina says her team was not surprised to see the contrary relationship between plants and pollution. The results, Churkina says, suggest city tree-planting programs should not ignore the role this greenery may play in bad summer air pollution. Adding more trees will improve quality of life only if those cities also undertake plans to sharply cut vehicle pollution (汽车污染).

1. What might people think of the new study finding?

A．Reasonable.

B．Intelligent.

C．Surprising.

D．Disappointing.

2. How does ozone come about according to the author?

A．It is released by trees and other green plants.

B．It directly comes from the burning of oxygen.

C．A part of nitrogen oxides results in ozone in the end.

D．It is from the chemical reaction between a hydrocarbon and burning pollutants.

3. What can we infer from the last two paragraphs?

A．The higher the temperature is, the more ozone forms.

B．There’re no emissions of chemicals in spring or autumn.

C．Churkina suggests the number of city trees be lessened.

D．Churkina was surprised at seeing the contrary finding first.

8 . Britain’s seed bank the only one in the world aiming to collect all of the planet’s wild plant species, has reached its goal of banking 10 percent by 2010.

The Millennium Seed Bank Project run by Kew Gardens — one of the oldest botanical gardens — will officially deposit the 24,200th species on Thursday, a pink, wild banana from China.

More than 50 countries are now on board with Kew’s giant task but vast places of the globe, including India and Brazil, still need to join in and donate seeds, director Paul Smith said.

The seed bank is one of the largest and most diverse in the world with more than 1.5 billion seeds. Its goal is to help protect the planet’s bio-diversity during a time of climate change.

The wild banana seed is under threat of extinction (灭绝) in southwest China from agricultural development. It is a vital food source for Asia elephants and important for growing bananas for human consumption.

The seeds are stored at minus 20 degrees centigrade. So they can last for thousands of years, the seeds await the day that scientists hope never comes — when the species no longer exist in the wild.

It is a race against time, Smith said, because in the last decade alone, 20 plants held in the bank have already been wiped out in the wild. He estimates that between a third and a quarter will become extinct this century.

“It is urgent and it is happening now. An area, the size of England, is cleared of primary vegetation (植被) every year.” Smith said.

Because most of the world’s food and medicines come from nature, protecting wild plant species is quite important, scientists say. There are already many other seed banks safeguarding food crops, which only account for 0.6 percent of plant diversity.

For Kew’s next goal — to collect a quarter of wild varieties by 2020 — the botanists need 10 million pounds a year, or a further 100 million pounds on top of the 40 million they have already been granted.

1. What’s the final purpose of the Britain’s seed bank?

A．To collect enough money for the project.

B．To safeguard food crops.

C．To help scientists study wild plants.

D．To protect wild plants from extinction.

2. The wild banana seed in China is in danger because of ________.

A．the climate change in this area	B．the expanding of farming work
C．the large number of Asian elephants	D．human’s large consumption

3. We can learn from the passage that ________.

A．the seeds in the bank can be used now and then all over the world

B．there is only one seed bank in the world at present

C．India and Brazil haven’t joined in the Seed Bank Project at present

D．the wild plants in places like India and China will never die out

4. What does the underlined word “It” in paragraph 7 refer to?

A．The extinction of plant species.	B．Kew Gardens’ next goal.
C．The Millennium Seed Bank Project.	D．Britain’s seed bank.

5. Which of the following information isn’t mentioned in the passage?

A．The global partnership of collecting wild plant species.

B．The temperature condition of the conservative wild plant species.

C．Scientists’ concern on the extinct wild plant species.

D．The government’s financial support for the seed bank project.

9 . Why do plants grow in some places and not in others? Why does some land have so much growing on it, while other land has almost no plants growing on it at all?

To grow, plants need several things. One is warmth. In very cold places almost nothing grows. Plants also need water. In very dry parts of the Earth only a few unusual plants can grow. That’s why dry deserts everywhere are almost not covered by trees or grass.

Plants must also have a place in which to put down their roots and grow. They find it difficult to grow on hard land. The town is built on hard land. The plants here have only the soil found between the cracks of the stones to grow in.

Another thing plants must have before they can grow is food.

What will happen if we try to make things grow on the sandy beach? A few plants, such as beach grass, will grow in sand, but most plants won’t. Even if the weather is warm enough and we water the plants each day, many of them will die because the sand on this beach has almost no food for plants.

1. According to the passage, plants need        things to grow well.

A．two

B．three

C．four

D．five

2. What does the underlined word “cracks” mean in the text?

A．缝隙

B．表面

C．夹层

D．底部

3. The reason why most plants can’t grow on the sandy beach is that        .

A．there isn’t enough sunlight	B．there is too much water
C．it is too crowded there	D．it has little food for plants

4. The passage can most probably be found in a        book.

A．science

B．history

C．travel

D．math

10 . In hot countries the woods are not like our woods. They are great dark forests, where the trees grow so closely together, and are so tall, that if you looked up you could hardly see the sky.

Then there are a great many climbing plants, which twist themselves round and round the trunks and branches of the trees. They are called vegetable cables, because they are so much like ropes. They reach from one tree to another, and almost fill up the spaces between. Troops of monkeys run along the vegetable cables from one tree to another, or swing from the branches by their tails, making a noise all the time as if they are talking to each other. When night comes they roll themselves into a ball, gathered together as close as may be, to keep themselves warm.

Dangers of every kind lie in the forest. The poisonous snake may lie coiled among the bushes, or traces of the wild American tiger may be seen upon the path.

Then there are all sorts of wonderful birds, such as we never see in our country, except in cages. Birds, beasts, and insects live there, for the most part, undisturbed. It is their home; and on every side they are at work, hunting their prey, or escaping from danger. For though man seldom wages war upon them, these wild creatures of the forest are engaged in constant warfare with each other; and the weak are always using some plan to protect themselves from the strong.

There are a great many curious things to be seen in these South American forests.

1. Why are the forests in hot countries so dark?

A．Because it is cloudy and rainy in the woods.

B．Because there is no sunshine shinning there.

C．Because it is night time there all year around.

D．Because the trees are tall and grow closely together.

2. What are the climbing-plants called?

A．Twisting trunks.	B．Vegetable cables.
C．Rolling ropes.	D．Grape branches.

3. How do the monkeys swing themselves from one tree to another?

A．By their talking.	B．By their running.
C．By their noises.	D．By their tails.

4. Which of the following can replace the underlined word “coiled”?

A．rolled	B．injured
C．climbed	D．poisoned

5. Of what is the forest specially the home?

A．Trees, trunks and branches.	B．Monkeys, snakes and tigers.
C．Birds, beasts, and insects.	D．Man, fruits and vegetables.