1 . Zhu Dejun’s first job after graduating from college was as a road design engineer in his hometown, Alshaa League, North Chin’s Inner Mongolia autonomous region(内蒙古自治区). In 2011, when Zhu was conducting a road survey along with his colleagues, he saw a plant that he didn’t recognize. Later, Zhu learned that the plant was a saxaul (灌木梭梭) tree which is an excellent tree species for sand fixation and afforestation (造林) in desert areas. Known as a desert guardian, a fully grown saxaul tree can hold together a 10-square-meter patch of desert land, according to Zhu.
Zhu quit (辞去) his job at the design institute in 2014 and joined a nonprofit organization, the Society of Entrepreneurs and Ecology Conservation, or SEE, in the same year, concentrating on dealing with desertification (沙漠化) .During the past eight years, Zhu has been leading a team from SEE to plant saxaul trees in sandy areas in Alshaa League and other places of Inner Mongolia.
In 2014, the SEE launched a project titled “one million saxaul trees”, aiming to reach that number from 2014 to 2023, turning the desert of more than 133, 330 hectares (公顷) back into a satisfying ecosystem. By the end of 2018, half of the organization’s goal had been achieved. In 2016, Ant Finance cooperated with SEE to introduce the Ant Forest platform, not only encouraging people to choose “a low-carbon way” of shopping, traveling and living, but also to help control desertification.
Through the participation of a greater number of online users, who grow virtual trees, the SEE Foundation, set up in 2008, has been providing subsidies (补助金) for local herdsmen and farmers while also offering technological support to plant saxaul trees in desert areas. Now, Zhu is the head of the foundation’s project to fight desertification. He also gives lectures about saxaul trees and the fight against desertification at schools, hoping to raise awareness among young people.
1. What did Zhu Dejun do first after graduation?| A．Here searched on saxaul trees. |
| B．He joined a nonprofit organization. |
| C．He found ways to fight desertification. |
| D．He focused on road design engineering. |
| A．They are easily taken care of. |
| B．They can grow fast in deserts. |
| C．They are perfect for holding water. |
| D．They can fight desertification effectively. |
| A．They teamed up with Ant Finance. |
| B．They planted one million saxaul trees. |
| C．They held online lectures on desertification. |
| D．They encouraged donation from online users. |
| A．By providing subsidies. | B．By raising awareness. |
| C．By planting trees online. | D．By offering technological support. |
2 . Looking to make the biggest impact during a crisis? This guide will help you get the necessary resources to the right people quickly and easily, as well as help you prepare for a potential emergency.
Create a fundraiser.
Put simply, more people equals more money, and creating your own fundraiser is a great way to encourage people who want to help. If you’re dealing with a local natural disaster, start by raising money through your community
Collect supplies.
Donate your skills or time.
You can contact your local emergency services, to see if they are seeking a helping hand. If you don’t have a particular skill, offer your time to help with clean up afterward. However, always call or check online first.
One of the most helpful things you can do in a natural disaster is to prepare yourself ahead of time. Not only will these preventive measures protect you, but they will also limit damage in case disaster strikes. The first step is to find out which disasters are most likely to affect you. The second step is stocking up on essential emergency items.
| A．Learn to cooperate with others |
| B．Prepare for a natural disaster in advance |
| C．Here is how to help those affected by natural disasters |
| D．Designate a charity to receive the funds so people can donate directly |
| E．If you’re trying to figure out how to help with natural disasters, you’re in the right place |
| F．It’s best to take a little extra time to figure out what is really in short of |
| G．Do not go as an individual volunteer to a disaster zone expecting to find ways to help |
3 . Rescuers in the Turkish city of Izmir have pulled a young girl out alive from the ruins of a collapsed housing complex four days after a strong earthquake hit Türkiye and Greece. The girl was taken to a hospital in an emergency vehicle. Sounds of cheering could be heard from rescue workers and people watching nearby.
Health Minister Fahrettin Koca identified the girl on Twitter as 3-year-old Ayda Gezgin. The child had been trapped inside the rubble (瓦砾) for 91 hours. She was the 107th person to have been rescued from collapsed buildings since Friday, the day the quake struck.
After her rescue, Ayda could be heard calling out for her mother in a video that played on television. But Ayda’s mother did not survive. Her body was found in the rubble hours later. Ayda’s brother and father were not inside the building at the time of the quake.
Rescuer Nusret Aksoy told reporters that he was searching through the wreckage of the building when he heard a child’s scream. He then called for silence. He later found the girl in a small space next to a dishwasher. The girl waved at him, told him her name and said that she was okay, Aksoy said. “I got goose bumps and my colleague Ahmet cried,” he told Haber Turk television.
Ibrahim Topal, of the Humanitarian Relief Foundation said, “My colleague and I looked at each other in surprise. We listened again. There was a very weak voice saying something . And then we shut everything down and started listening again. And there really was a voice.”
Health ministry officials said the girl was in good condition but would be kept under observation. She asked for a special meal of meatballs and a yogurt drink on her way to the hospital, the state-operated Anadolu Agency reported.
1. How did rescue workers and people watching feel when the girl was rescued?| A．Sorrowful. | B．Worried. | C．Pitiful. | D．Excited. |
| A．To talk to his colleague. | B．To make the little girl calm. |
| C．To locate where the voice came from. | D．To make himself heard by the girl. |
| A．She was anxious. | B．She was calm. |
| C．She was desperate. | D．She was frightened. |
| A．The damage caused by the earthquake in Turkiye. |
| B．The terrible earthquake that hit Turkish city of Izmir. |
| C．The present condition of the girl saved from the earthquake. |
| D．The rescue of a 3-year-old girl after being trapped for four days. |
In the past 10 years, China has added more than 22 million hectares of forest. Thanks to
In 2022, China completed the afforestation (植树造林) of 3.83 million hectares and treated 1, 847, 300 hectares of rock-deserted land. After continuous effort, China has achieved
China’s forest coverage rate has reached 24 percent, and forest accumulation has reached 19 billion cubic meters,
In terms of vegetation (植被) restoration, in 2020 China published a guideline to perform a forest chief scheme nationwide. Principal leaders of governments should
Bazhou District in China’s Sichuan Province is
In terms of ecological civilization education, in Shanghai, for example, an elementary school has
5 . Many people think of sharks as dangerous monsters. But human beings cause a far greater danger to them than they do to us. Although shark attacks do occur, they are quite rare. According to one estimate, however, humans kill 100 million sharks every year.
Why should we save the sharks?
Sharks take up the top position on the food chain in the ocean. As sharks die off, the population of the animals that sharks consume will increase. This, in turn, means that the number of the creatures those animals eat will drop.
Don’t use shark products
First, vitamin energy drinks and leather goods can be made from shark parts.
| A．It is time for children to learn about sharks. |
| B．Shark oil is also used in many popular beauty products. |
| C．Then the shark dies slowly, sometimes over several days. |
| D．Actually, the killing of sharks will affect the whole planet. |
| E．People in some countries are especially keen on shark products. |
| F．Among them are some sea fish that humans consume every day. |
| G．This number is a warning that many kinds of sharks may die out. |
6 . The climate change has become an issue that no one can escape from. If the world wants to limit climate change, water shortage and pollution, we all need to choose “flexitarian” diets, say scientists.
This means eating mainly plant-based food, which is one of three key steps towards a sustainable future for all in 2050, they say. Food waste will need to be halved and farming practices will also have to improve, according to the study. Without action, the impacts of the food system could increase by up to 90%. Fast on the heels of the landmark report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change(IPCC) comes this new study on how food production and consumption impact major threats to the planet.
The authors say that the food system has a number of significant environmental impacts including being a major driver of climate change, providing freshwater and reducing pollution through over use of nitrogen (氮) and phosphorus (磷).
The study says that thanks to the population and income growth expected between 2010 and2050, these impacts could grow between 50%~90%. This could push our world beyond its geographic boundaries. So when it comes to climate change, the authors looked at what they called a “flexitarian diet”.
“We can eat a range of healthy diets but what they all have in common, according to the latest scientific evidence, is that they are all relatively plant-based,’’ said lead author Dr. Marco Springmann from the University of Oxford.
“You can go from a diet that has small amounts of animal products; some might call it a Mediterranean-based diet; we call it a flexitarian diet. We tried to stay with the most conservative one of these which in our view is the flexitarian one, but even this has only one serving of red meat per week,” he added.
If the world moved to this type of diet, the study found that greenhouse gas emissions (排放) from agriculture would be reduced by more than half.
1. What benefit will the new diets bring to the world?| A．The animals will be saved. | B．People will need more water. |
| C．The climate change will stop. | D．The pollution will be controlled |
| A．Eat animal products every meal. |
| B．Eat plant-based vegetables every meal. |
| C．Eat mainly vegetables and never eat animal products. |
| D．Eat plant-based meal mainly and animal products sometimes. |
| A．The climate will become warmer. | B．The food consumption will increase. |
| C．People will have less greenhouse gas. | D．People will produce more food waste. |
| A．Supportive. | B．Doubtful. | C．Opposed. | D．Indifferent. |
7 . Recent research confirms what our farming ancestors have known for centuries about hedges (树篱). They conserve precious soil by acting as windbreaks and absorbing rainwater that would otherwise wash it from the fields. And hedges store carbon, putting them in the front line of our bi d to tackle the climate crisis.
However, hedges have had a tough time in the poor countryside, with farmers encouraged to tear them down in pursuit of maximum production and larger field s to accommodate ever-larger machinery. What’s more, some hedges have been ignored. If left to their own devices, they’ll eventually become a line of trees. Some hedges each year lose their structures and fail to fulfil the primary duty as a barrier. Around a half of the nation’s hedges have disappeared in the past century.
There are signs that “the tide is turning”. The search for net zero has aroused many organizations’ interest in the humble hedge’s role as a carbon sink. The Climate Change Committee is recommending a 40 percent increase in hedges: an additional 200,000 km. Such recommendations are starting to drive policy. Cash-pressed farmers will be encouraged to create new hedges and improve their management of existing ones under the new Environmental Land Management Schemes, which will replace many of the existing agricultural support payments in coming years. Meanwhile, initiatives such as Close the Gap, led by the Tree Council, is providing funding and support to plug the gaps in existing hedges with new planting. There’s even an app to help time-pressed farmers do a quick survey to spot where their hedges need some help.
This is a good time for hedges. Take some of the most pressing challenges facing the countryside, and indeed, the world as a whole — the climate crisis, soil erosion (侵蚀), insect attack and wider biodiversity loss — and hedges are part of the solution.
1. What does recent research show about hedges?| A．They are unique landscapes in the rain. |
| B．They act as dividing lines between fields. |
| C．They have long been helpful to agriculture. |
| D．They are frequently washed away from the fields. |
| A．Their suffering. | B．Their production. |
| C．Their duties. | D．Their structures. |
| A．Puzzled. | B．Concerned. | C．Humble. | D．Indifferent. |
| A．Hedges: Ancient Resources |
| B．Hedges: Official Recommendations |
| C．Restoring Hedges: Bringing Benefits to the Environment |
| D．Researching Hedges: Originating from Farmers’ Request |
1. 说明缘由；
2. 请她介绍美国的自然灾害并谈谈影响、应对措施等；
3. 告知征文的截稿日期。
注意：
1. 词数 80 左右；
2. 可适当加入细节，以使行文连贯；
3. 开头已给出，不计入总词数。
Dear Alice,
Our school English paper will hold an essay competition whose theme is Natural Disasters.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Yours,
Li Hua
China’s endangered Amur tigers are on the rebound (反弹), with populations reportedly quintupling (五倍增长) in the last several decades due
In the last eight years, research has revealed at least 55 Amur tigers hanging around northeastern China - a major increase from the
Many of these beautiful animals died as
Dale Miquelle, the director of the Wildlife Conservation Society in Russia, said that the results speak for
“Persistent (可持续的) efforts
10 . The Great Barrier Reef is the result of millions of years of continental (大陆的) shifts, sea-level changes, and layers of coral (珊瑚) growth. The Reef was built over millennia (数千年) by coral attaching itself to existing dead coral, as it continued to reach toward the light. Like most living things, coral needs the sun to survive and generally lives in shallow waters, where enough sunlight can penetrate (穿透) the water. Sea levels began to rise at the end of the last most recent ice age, about 14,000 years ago. As a result, the previously exposed Reef was covered by water and the coral expanded along the length of the newly revived Reef.
Climate change is having a dangerous impact on this natural wonder. Although coral and algae (海藻) have evolved despite climate change, allowing them to survive, coral has begun producing products that are poisonous to the Reef and block the growth of algae. Additional concerns include the overwhelming amount of pollution and chemical runoff into the water which harms the already affected coral and reduces biodiversity.
The Great Barrier Reef is well known as one of the best diving destinations in the world. You can do your part to help scientists preserve the Reef’s ecosystem while visiting. By paying a visit to the Reef, visitors pay a reef tax that will be used for the management and conservation of the Reef. A lesser-known contribution visitors can make to Reef preservation is signing up for REEFSearch. After signing up, you’ll be sent a field guide that will teach you how to collect information that scientists can use to study the Reef’ s health. During each dive, using the information sent to you, you will look for key species, check for coral conditions, and make note of any garbage found near the Reef. These small contributions can ultimately have a large impact and save one of the great wonders of the world.
1. Why does coral live in shallow waters?| A．It must coexist with algae. | B．It needs sufficient sunlight. |
| C．It has to stick to dead ancestors. | D．It has to avoid deep-sea pollution. |
| A．The rise of sea levels. | B．The exposure of it to air. |
| C．The change of its habitat. | D．The threat from its enemies. |
| A．Coral cannot survive. | B．Algae become harmful. |
| C．Algae cannot be seen on the surface. | D．Coral produces something poisonous to the Reef. |
| A．Study the Reef’ s formation. | B．Find new habitats for coral. |
| C．Gather information on the Reef’ s health. | D．Search for dangerous species around coral. |
