1 . Scientists often compare coral reefs(珊瑚礁) to underwater rainforests, yet unlike the leafy plant base of a forest, corals are animals. The soft creatures are naturally half-transparent and get their brilliant color from algae(藻类) living inside them. When corals experience stress from hot temperatures or pollution, they halt the interdependent relationship with algae, typically pushing them out and turning white. Corals are still alive when they are white, but they're at risk and many eventually die, turning dark brown.
Scientists around the world are looking for means to protect and maybe increase corals. One common option is to create more protected areas — essentially national parks in the ocean. Beyond nature preserves, some conservationists are looking to more hands-on methods. One research center in the Florida Keys is exploring a form of natural selection to keep corals remaining. The reef system in the Keys has been hit hard by climate change and pollution, which is especially tough, because corals there help support fisheries worth $ 100 million every year.
To keep the wild ecosystem alive, Erinn Muller, the center's director, and her team are harvesting samples of the corals that survived the environmental stress naturally, keeping them to make them reproduce, and then reattaching them to the reef. They have 46,000 corals on plastic frames under the sea. So far, the center has regrown over 70,000 corals from five different species on damaged reefs.
In The Bahamas, Ross Cunning, a research biologist at Chicago's Shedd Aquarium, focuses on corals with genes that could make them natural candidates for restoration projects. He published a study of two Bahamian reefs, one that survived an extreme 2015 heat wave, and one that didn't. "We think their ability to deal with these higher temperatures is built into their genes," says Cunning. There's evidence of corals evolving more quickly to resist rapidly warming climate. The big question scientists need investigate, adds Gunning, is how much more heat corals can adapt to.
1. What does the underlined word "halt" in the first paragraph mean?| A．End. | B．Develop. | C．Strengthen. | D．Weaken. |
| A．Restore the damaged reefs. | B．Grow corals by hand underwater. |
| C．Create more protected areas. | D．Move corals to unpolluted areas. |
| A．Many corals have been genetically improved. | B．Cooling down the waters is key to rescuing corals. |
| C．Reasons for corals surviving heat waves are shocking. | D．The highest temperature corals can survive is unclear. |
| A．Relationship between corals and algae | B．Efforts made to save corals |
| C．Impact of climate warming on corals | D．Survival crisis faced by coral reefs |
1. Who does the speaker probably speak to?
| A．Students. | B．Teachers. | C．Parents. |
| A．Paper bags. | B．Plastic bags. | C．Reusable bags. |
| A．Unplugging the devices. |
| B．Using energy-saving devices. |
| C．Standing beside the devices. |
| A．To call for people to take action. |
| B．To correct some wrong ideas. |
| C．To discuss different habits in life. |
(1)乱停放自行车造成的不良影响；
(2)发出倡议。
注意：
(1)写作词数应为80左右；
(2)请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
参考词汇：random随意的
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4 . About 12 million tons of plastic wastes are entering the oceans every year. This garbage pollutes the water, kills wildlife and breaks down into small pieces that fish and other creatures eat.
Now a group of Spanish fishermen will receive economic support to catch plastics. It is part of a new project. Carlos Martin is one of the fishermen taking part in the project. He and his partners collect the plastic in the ocean and bring it back to land every week. Martin thinks rivers carry a lot of plastics to the sea. He says his most concern is no more than that the plastics often get caught in the nets, which makes nets not work properly. They take on mud（泥）, causing the nets to break because they weigh so much.
Under the new programs, one million pounds will support ocean cleanup efforts for fishermen like Martin. The money is coming from the European Union and the Catalan government. Sergi Tudela, the General Director of Catalonia Fisheries, is responsible for the cleanup project. He said, "We are hopeful that if we are successful in this project, we can apply it to other areas in the Mediterranean（地中海）."
Government reports show that the amount of plastic wastes washing up along the Spanish coastline has grown by 65 percent in just six years. Fishing equipment makes up a large part of the about 8 to 12 million tons of plastics left in the world's oceans every year.
Martin says the fishing community now understands how big the problem is. He says, "In the past we didn't see it that way. We took the plastic garbage and threw it back into the water. I think that after a few year here we have realized the problem. Nothing is thrown into the water; we collect everything and bring it to shore.
1. What worries Martin most about plastic wastes at the beginning?| A．They pollute the sea environment. |
| B．They affect the quality and taste of fish. |
| C．They prevent the fishing nets from working well. |
| D．They kill wildlife and reduce his fishing amount. |
| A．Getting more money to support the project. |
| B．Getting help from other European countries. |
| C．Spreading the cleanup project to more places. |
| D．Praising the European Union for their helping to the oceans. |
| A．Its members do a lot of work for free. |
| B．It has stopped using plastic fishing equipment. |
| C．It has made positive changes to fight plastic wastes. |
| D．Its members find people sill throw the garbage carelessly. |
| A．New programs are changing fishermen's life |
| B．Money is given to Spanish fishermen to clean up oceans |
| C．Traditional fishing equipment causes a lot of plastic wastes |
| D．Spanish fishermen are encouraging people to clean up oceans |
5 . The city of Venice, Italy, has finally made a long-awaited decision. Starting on August 1, 2021, cruise ships (游轮) will no longer be allowed to enter the city’s waters.
Contrary to popular opinion, these cruise ship visitors contribute relatively little to the local tourism economy. The New York Times reported cruise ship passengers add up to 73% of visitors, but contribute a mere 18% of tourism dollars. The percentage is inverted for people who spend at least one night at a hotel; they represent 14% of visitors, but 48% of the business.
Many people are overjoyed by the news, especially environmental activists. Firstly, the cruise ships would disturb the waterways and erode (侵蚀) the foundations of already weak buildings. A 2019 study published in Nature found the waves created by large ships could “redistribute industrial pollutants already present in the waters.” Others have said these same waves made huge holes in the underwater bottoms of buildings, making them unstable. Furthermore, when canals are deepened in order to allow larger boats, it destroys coastal habitats and makes floods worse. This is part of the reason why, in recent years, Venice has experienced terrible flooding that completely flooded St. Mark’s Square and other landmarks.
The announcement came as a surprise as many did not expect the regional government to act so quickly. In April a similar ban was issued, but it depended on finding an alternative port for the ships—a requirement that local people complained could take years to achieve. The announcement made last week, however, did away with that condition, allowing the city to move forward quickly with the ban.
1. What does the underlined word “inverted” mean in Paragraph 2?| A．Increased slightly. | B．Looked down upon. | C．Adjusted accordingly. | D．Turned upside down. |
| A．Reasons for Venice’s terrible floods. | B．Dangers cruise ships brought about. |
| C．Reaction to the long-awaited decision. | D．Damage waves did to buildings. |
| A．Unclear. | B．Hopeful. | C．Doubtful. | D．Objective. |
| A．Venice Says “No” to Cruise Ships. | B．The Long-awaited Decision to be Made. |
| C．Cruise Ships Erodes Ancient Venice. | D．Venice Tries to Protect Its Waterway. |
6 . A method to transform a commonly thrown-away plastic to a resin (树脂) used in 3D printing could allow for making better use of plastic waste. A team of Washington State University researchers developed a simple and efficient way to transform polylactic acid (PLA)(聚乳酸), a bio-based plastic used in products such as filament, plastic silverware and food packaging to a high-quality resin.
“We found a way to immediately turn this into something that’s stronger and better, and we hope that will provide people the inspiration to upcycle this stuff instead of just throw it away,” said Yu-Chung Chang, a postdoctoral researcher in the WSU School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering and a co-corresponding author on the work. “We made stronger materials just straight out of trash. We believe this could be a great opportunity.”
Although it’s bio-based, PLA, which is categorized as a number 7 plastic, doesn’t break down easily. It can float in fresh or salt water for a year without degrading (降解). It is also rarely recycled because like many plastics, when it’s melted down and re-formed, it doesn’t perform as well as the original version and becomes less valuable.
“It’s biodegradable and compostable, but once you look into it, it turns out that it can take up to 100 years for it to rot away in a landfill,” Chang said. “In reality, it still creates a lot of pollution. We want to make sure that when we do start producing PLA on the milliontons scale, we will know how to deal with it.”
While the researchers focused on PLA for the study, they hope to apply the work to poly-ethylene terephthalate (PET) (涤纶树脂), which is more common than PLA and has a similar chemical structure and presents a bigger waste problem. They have filed a temporary patent and are working to further optimize (优化) the process. The researchers are also looking into other applications for the upcycling method.
1. What can the method help do according to paragraph 1?| A．Solve financial crisis. | B．Change waste into wealth. |
| C．Control plastic production. | D．Determine 3D printing skills. |
| A．Promising. | B．Unrealistic. | C．Imaginable. | D．Reliable. |
| A．Invaluable to recycle. | B．Easy to deal with. |
| C．Hard to break down. | D．Difficult to sort out. |
| A．Applications for an upcylcing method. |
| B．A better method to break down plastic. |
| C．3D printing with newly found materials. |
| D．A new way to turn plastic into valuable products. |
7 . If plastic had been invented when the Pilgrims sailed from Plymouth, England, to North America - and their Mayflower had been stocked with bottled water and plastic-wrapped snacks, their plastic waste would likely still be around four centuries later. Atlantic waves and sunlight would have worn all that plastic into tiny bits. And those bits might still be floating around the world’s oceans today, waiting to be eaten by some fish or oyster, and finally perhaps by one of us.
Because plastic wasn’t invented until the late 19th century, and its production only really took off around 1950, we have a mere 9. 2 billion tons of the stuff to deal with. Of that, more than 6. 9 billion tons have become waste. And of that waste, a surprising 6. 3 billion tons never made it to a recycling bin - the figure that shocked the scientists who published the numbers in 2017.
No one knows how much unrecycled plastic waste ends up in the ocean, the earth’s last sink. In 2015, Jenna Jambeck, a University of Georgia engineering professor, caught everyone’s attention with a rough estimate: between 5. 3 million and 14 million tons of plastic waste each year just come from coastal regions.
Meanwhile, ocean plastic is estimated to kill millions of marine( 海 洋 的 )animals every year. Nearly 700 species, including endangered ones, are known to have been affected by it. Some are harmed visibly, stuck by abandoned things made of plastic. Many more are probably harmed invisibly. Marine species of all sizes, from zooplankton to whales, now eat microplastics, the bits smaller than one-fifth of an inch across.
“This isn’t a problem where we don’t know what the solution is,” says Ted Siegler, a Vermont resource economist who has spent more than 25 years working with developing nations on garbage. “We know how to pick up garbage. Anyone can do it. We know how to deal with it. We know how to recycle.” It’s a matter of building the necessary institutions and systems, he says, ideally before the ocean turns into a thin soup of plastic.
1. Why does the author mention the Pilgrims in paragraph 1?| A．To prove plastic was difficult to invent. |
| B．To introduce what marine animals like eating. |
| C．To tell the Pilgrims contributed a lot to the marine protection. |
| D．To show plastic waste has a lasting effect on the ocean. |
| A．Lacking protection. | B．Being stuck by plastics. |
| C．Being caught by humans. | D．Treating plastics as food. |
| A．Some people don’t know the solution of plastics waste. |
| B．Plastics will turn the ocean into a soup of plastic. |
| C．It’s time to take measures to deal with plastic waste. |
| D．People should avoid using plastics to protect the ocean. |
| A．A biology textbook. | B．A travel brochure. |
| C．An environmental report. | D．A lifestyle magazine. |
8 . When most of us think of sand, we immediately think of sunny beaches and summer holidays. But actually it’s in pretty much everything that surrounds us in our everyday lives, from the walls of our homes to the glass bottles in out kitchens and even the mobile phones in our hands. Sand is the second most used resource in the world after water: it accounts for more than two-thirds of everything that’s being dug out of the ground. But there isn’t a limitless supply. In fact, a UN report says we might be running out.
According to the report, we use an estimated 15 billion tons of sand every year in the construction industry alone. That’s enough to build a 20m×20m wall around the equator (赤道) every year. However, sand can take tens of thousands of years to form (形成): the process starts with rock being eroded (侵蚀) in the mountains and ends, eventually, with sand being in river beds, on beaches and on the seafloor.
Sand is heavy and difficult to transport, so in developing countries, sand is often mined from the nearest convenient source, and quite often that means a river bed or beach. But beaches and rivers are delicately balanced ecosystems and when a large amount of sand is removed, the balance is upset. The smallest fish, which eat organic matter on the sand in river beds, form the base of the food chain in a river. If this sand is removed, so is the source of food for the bottom feeders. All organisms in a food chain share the joys and the sorrows. Thus, when they disappear, so does the food for the larger fish which would have been caught and eaten, or sold by fishermen.
It is high time we took into consideration the big problem concerning the tiny thing. More and more conservationists are calling for new choices to replace sand, especially in the construction industry.
1. Why are the things in our daily life mentioned in the beginning?| A．To show the uses of sand. | B．To show our relationship with nature. |
| C．To introduce our lifestyles. | D．To stress the convenience of modern life. |
| A．Sand is actually our most used natural resource. |
| B．Sand is used more quickly than it’s formed. |
| C．The construction industry doesn’t use sand wisely. |
| D．The problem of wasting sand is worsening. |
| A．The river beds. | B．The fishermen. |
| C．The larger fish. | D．The smallest fish. |
| A．The World Is Running Out of Sand |
| B．Alternatives to Sand Will Be Found Soon |
| C．Sand Mining Is Unfriendly to Nature |
| D．Sand Is in Need of Immediate Preservation |
9 . You can see a sea turtle named Hermanan octopus(章鱼) called Octavia, and a seal named Lidia at the Smithsonians National Zoo in Washington DC. Rather than real animals, they are actually artworks made out of plastic trash from the ocean.
These artworks are part of a traveling exhibit called “Washed Ashore: Art to Save the Sea”. The Washed Ashore project, led by the artist called Pozzi, works to raise awareness about plastic pollution in Earth’s oceans.
More than 315 billion pounds of plastic litter the world’s oceans today. Most of the plastic is garbage from towns and cities, as well as trash that people leave on beaches. Rainwater, winds, and high tides bring the trash into the ocean or into rivers that lead to the ocean. Once it is under the waves, the plastic begins to break up into smaller and smaller pieces.
Thousands of sea animals die each year from eating plastic bags and other things. Each year, millions more pounds of plastic end up in the ocean. A recent study found that if that continues, by 2050 the total weight of plastic will be more than that of all the fish in the ocean.
The Washed Ashore project is working to stop that from happening. Since 2010, Washed Ashore volunteers have collected 38000 pounds of plastic trash from more than 300 miles of beaches. They helped Pozzi create more than 60 artworks of sea creatures harmed by plastic pollution.
“These artworks are a powerful reminder of our personal role and global responsibility in preserving biodiversity(生物多样性)on land and in the sea,” says Dennis Kelly, director of the National Zoo.
1. What can be learned from the data in Paragraph 5?| A．Pollution will be more serious in the ocean. |
| B．More artworks of sea creatures will be made. |
| C．The project has made great achievements. |
| D．Volunteers can get rid of pollution by 2050. |
| A．Worried. | B．Supportive. | C．Doubtful. | D．Unconcerned. |
| A．The use of plastic bags. | B．The increase in plastic rubbish. |
| C．The result mentioned above. | D．The breaking up of plastic. |
| A．Turning trash into art | B．Working for Washed Ashore |
| C．Collecting plastic trash | D．Stopping environmental pollution |
10 . Going green seems to be fad (时尚) for a lot of people these days. Whether that is good or bad, we can’t really say, but for the two of us, going green is not a fad but a lifestyle.
On April 22,2011,we decided to be green every single day for an entire year. This meant doing 365 different things, and it also meant challenging ourselves to go green beyond the easy things. Rather than recycle and reduce our energy, we had to think of 365 different things to do and this was no easy task.
With the idea of going green every single day a year, Our Green Year started. My wife and I decided to educate people about how they could go green in their lives and hoped we could show people all green things that could be done to help the environment. We wanted to push the message that every little bit helps.
Over the course of Our Green Year, we completely changed our lifestyles. We now shop at organic (有机的) stores. We consume less meat, choosing green food. We have greatly reduced our buying we don’t need. We have given away half of what we owned through websites. Our home is kept clean by vinegar and lemon juice, with no chemical cleaners. We make our own butter, enjoying the smell of home-made fresh bread. In our home office anyone caught doing something ungreen might be punished.
Our minds have been changed by Our Green Year. We are grateful for the chance to have been able to go green and educate others. We believe that we do have the power to change things and help our planets.
1. What might be the best title for the passage?| A．Going Green. | B．Protecting the Planet. |
| C．Keeping Open-Minded | D．Celebrating Our Green Year. |
| A．they were expected to follow the green fad |
| B．they didn’t know how to educate other people |
| C．they were unwilling to reduce their energy |
| D．they needed to perform unusual green tasks |
| A．They tried to get out of their ungreen habits. |
| B．They ignore others’ ungreen behavior. |
| C．They chose better chemical cleaners. |
| D．They sold their home-made food. |
| A．The government will give support to the green people. |
| B．The couple may continue their project in the future. |
| C．Some people disagree with the couple’s green ideas. |
| D．Our Green Year is becoming a national campaign. |
