1 . Researcher Ruijia Hu said wildlife habitat in crowded places like south went Ohio is becoming increasingly fragmented (分散) as forests give way to new construction. Eventually, this could make trouble to an animal with specific habitat needs like Ohio’s pileated (红冠) woodpecker.
Pileated woodpeckers have the nickname carpenter birds for their never-ending natural woodworking. They peck out holes in trees for their nests every year, creating lots of valuable homes for animals like fox squirrels and owls. “They make new nests every year. They won’t reuse old ones,” Hu said. “Other animals depend on them.”
Pileated woodpeckers are private birds that are more often heard than seen. Studying them can be especially difficult. So Hu turned to citizen science for help. To identify where woodpeckers have been seen, she used eight years of sightings collected by birders and logged into the website eBird, a free online tool and app that anyone can use to record their observations and locations. She overlaid these sightings with remote sensing data and found that corridors along rivers and creeks with abundant mature trees and deadwood helped the birds adjust to their increasingly fragmented urban landscape.
“With fragmented forests, many habitats that were once suitable for wildlife are broken up,” Hu sa id. “Wildlife is unable to find habitat big enough to meet their survival needs. And even if there are suitable habitats, the distance between them can be too great. Wildlife corridors link up these habitat patches. Since wildlife can travel and migrate from one patch to another, the probability of finding food and shelter is higher.”
“There are so many species in urban areas that we don’t pay attention to, especially when they’re not considered vulnerable,” Hu said. “With development chipping away at more forest in this crowded county, the tipping point (临界点) could come quickly and unexpectedly. You can’t fix it overnight. It’s not just about planting more trees. The birds need mature forest, so it could take 30 to 50 years to replace their habitat. At least we can protect these riverside forest corridors and see that existing trees reach maturity.”
1. What can we infer from the second paragraph?| A．The magpie’s nest is occupied by the dove. |
| B．Birds abandon the old for the new easily. |
| C．Friendship really exists among animals. |
| D．One’s trash is another treasure. |
| A．The effect of Hu’s study on birds. |
| B．The process of Hu’s research. |
| C．The difficulty Hu had in his study. |
| D．The application of technology. |
| A．Helping them survive in the fragmented landscape. |
| B．Making them adjust to deadwood quickly. |
| C．Providing them with enough food for survival. |
| D．Ensuring them a stable and safe habitat. |
| A．One tree doesn’t make a forest. |
| B．Be wise after the event. |
| C．Prepare for a rainy day. |
| D．Take things as they come. |
2 . Tima Abudhi is a 55-year-old mother of five. When growing up, she remembers watching her neighbors
As the mangroves
“Replanting the mangroves is not
Today, the women of Kizingitini no longer have to
Mangrove forests can
| A．cut away | B．settle down | C．set out | D．get up |
| A．moved | B．disappeared | C．died | D．rose |
| A．contribution | B．choice | C．disaster | D．luck |
| A．encouraged | B．motivated | C．forbade | D．persuaded |
| A．neighbor | B．community | C．beach | D．village |
| A．selling | B．assessing | C．closing | D．running |
| A．increased | B．gained | C．produced | D．decreased |
| A．difficult | B．easy | C．worthwhile | D．suitable |
| A．return | B．calm | C．withdraw | D．remove |
| A．hard | B．enough | C．long | D．cheap |
| A．struggle | B．stop | C．prepare | D．determine |
| A．attempt | B．witness | C．afford | D．refuse |
| A．unemployment | B．resignation | C．participation | D．ignorance |
| A．gender | B．wealth | C．income | D．age |
| A．cancel | B．keep | C．accelerate | D．slow |
3 . While it throws out about 90 pounds of food per person every year, Japan doesn’t rank at the top of the world’s list of wasteful nations. Still, what’s thrown away represents a serious problem for an island nation with limited landfill space and a goal of greater sustainability. Reinvention can offer an alternative. A Japanese company is taking vegetable peels, cooking oil and other used foodstuffs and making entirely different products.
Concrete is the most widely used construction material in the world, and its key element, cement, is a major polluter of greenhouse emissions. So what if a more sustainable alterative were possible by making cement with food waste, which also would help reduce greenhouse emissions from landfills where that waste would otherwise be thrown away? That’s the idea behind Fabula, a Tokyo-based start-up.
Researchers at Fabula created a recipe to make food concrete by drying leftovers and pressing them into a mold (模具) at a high temperature. The company, founded by researchers at the University of Tokyo, began with items commonly thrown away like cabbage and orange peels but found that almost any food item can be used. It now takes mostly coffee grounds and tea leaves to make its cement. The product’s durability depends on the components.
Fabula is currently producing made-to-order household items, such as coasters and dishes, while awaiting its patent. The goal is to make furniture and larger structures once the technology is able to make the cement more durable. Food production companies that can’t avoid generating waste during their processes have reached out to work with the company. “We hope to become a matching service between companies that have food waste and companies who want to build things out of such materials,” said Takuma Oishi, Fabula’s chief commercial officer.
Since the cement is 100 percent eatable, it could create opportunities during disaster response when temporary structures need to be built quickly. The people inside might even turn to them for food. If the technology advances enough, Oishi suggested, someday we may be able “to eat the homes or furniture when necessary”.
1. Which problem Japan faces is mentioned in paragraph 1?| A．Food waste. |
| B．Garbage littering. |
| C．Energy crisis. |
| D．Environmental pollution. |
| A．Using food remains in recipes. |
| B．Finding a cheaper alternative to landfills. |
| C．Making a novel building material from leftovers. |
| D．Cutting greenhouse gases by recycling home devices. |
| A．The diversity of food sources. |
| B．The prospects of the company. |
| C．The innovation of a traditional cuisine. |
| D．The process of developing food concrete. |
| A．It can fill stomachs. |
| B．It’s solid and lasting. |
| C．It can prevent disasters. |
| D．It’s delicate but cost-free. |
1.保护野生动植物的重要性；
2.你校的宣传活动；
3.你的建议。
注意：1.词数80左右；
2.可以适当增加细节，以使行文连贯。
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5 . The rechargeable lithium-ion (锂离子) battery market is worth more than ＄50 billion. Lithium-ion batteries, whose demand continues to go up day by day, are used in a wide range of electronic devices. They are made of four main components, and cathode (阴极) is one of them. The cathode’s active material type is what determines the capacity of a battery.
A recent study, led by Wang Yan, a material scientist of Worcester Polytechnic Institute, finds that lithium-ion batteries made with recycled cathodes work better than those with new cathodes.
“The battery industry is expected to grow sharply in the next decade. This high demand has led companies to go to extremes, like increasing deep-sea mining, to gain access to the minerals used in lithium-ion batteries,” Wang said. “Mining minerals will have environmental impacts. Recycling spent lithium-ion batteries offers a way out.”
But until now, the prospect of using recycled materials in lithium-ion batteries has some manufacturers (制造商) worrying that it could impact performance. Thus, lithium-ion batteries are still not widely recycled. Aware of decreasing resources and environmental impact, Wang and other researchers set out to find a way to make recycling lithium-ion batteries economically practical. Through experiments, they could recover more than 90% of the key metals from spent batteries. These recovered metals became the basis of the new recycled battery’s cathode’s active material.
In tests between Wang’s team’s recycled batteries and brand-new batteries of the same composition, the recycled batteries outperform the new ones in their ability to maintain capacity. It took 11,600 charge cycles for recycled cathode batteries to lose 30 percent of their original capacity. That was about 50 percent better than the 7,600 observed cycles for new cathode batteries, the team reported. Those thousands of extra cycles could translate into years of better battery performance, even after repeated use and recharging.
1. What can we learn about lithium-ion batteries from the first paragraph?| A．They are high in price. |
| B．They are in great demand. |
| C．They are limited in use. |
| D．They are simple in composition. |
| A．The target users of recycled batteries. |
| B．The ways to get minerals for batteries. |
| C．The major reasons for recycling batteries. |
| D．The complex process of recycling batteries. |
| A．Declining mineral resources. |
| B．Difficult recycling techniques. |
| C．Serious environmental problems. |
| D．Inefficient battery performance. |
| A．The battery industry is going to develop dramatically. |
| B．Recycling batteries reduces impact on the environment. |
| C．Scientists can recover key materials from spent batteries. |
| D．Recycled batteries outperform new ones in charging circles. |
6 . Michael Gonsalves, a chef of Golden Oak at Disney World, has a cuisine concept rooted in fresh, locally-sourced ingredients that originated from childhood harvesting produce from their family garden with his mom to eventually leading kitchens at Walt Disney World Resorts to employ a sustainable model.
“Truly the whole process starts with menu planning,” he said. Creating one dish leads into the creation of many more through the end-to-end use of products. As chefs, they are always searching for the best ingredients. It is then their focus to ensure they appreciate and respect all that go into each and every one of them. For example, they source chicken that is naturally grown and fed on a natural plant forward diet, no hormones (激素) or additives — that’s used in many ways throughout menus from a simple grilled chicken breast to bone soup. Nothing goes to waste.
When they do have waste, even if minimal, they shift it from landfills to transform it into compost (堆肥) that’s then used across the Walt Disney World property. They also support Second Harvest, a local community food bank where healthy produce, prepared, but not served, meals eatable for human consumption are donated. Disney also works with pig farmers when they can’t distribute foods past the point of safety for human consumption. Besides, wildlife reservations love to get the meat because tigers and wild cats can still eat that.
Their operations are “on a path to a sustainable zero waste kitchen of tomorrow” where chefs learn the full-life cycle of plants from seed to plate and gain a better understanding and appreciation for the product and their craft.
Golden Oak at Disney has millions of bees that produce up to 300 pounds of honey per year, plus those bees help with cross pollination (授粉) of their gardens on a daily basis. They advocate a culture that helps develop not only the quality of food, but an appreciation for nature.
1. Where did Michael Gonsalves’ idea about cuisine come from?| A．His mom’s suggestions. | B．His dream of becoming a chef. |
| C．His interest in delicious food. | D．His labor experience as a child. |
| A．They are grilled to eat. | B．They are used to the fullest. |
| C．They are divided into groups. | D．They are selected by quality. |
| A．Give examples about zero waste. |
| B．Introduce the unique habit of wildlife. |
| C．Stress the importance of natural food. |
| D．Explain the operation mode of the food bank. |
| A．Disney World:New Cuisine Road |
| B．Michael Gonsalves:Creative Chef |
| C．Michael Gonsalves:Advocate of Food Diversity |
| D．Disney World:Pioneer in Environmental Protection |
7 . One man’s trash is another man’s treasure is absolutely the case in Turkey where garbage collectors started collecting books that have been thrown away and ended up opening a library.
It started when garbage man Durson Ipek found a bag of abandoned books when he was working and then it snowballed from there. Ipek and other garbage men started gathering the books they found on the streets that were ready for landfills (垃圾填埋地) and as their collection started to grow, so did word of mouth. Soon, local residents started donating books directly. The library was initially available only to the garbage employees and their families to use but as the collection grew, so did public interest and the library was opened to the public in 2017.
“On the one hand, there were those who were leaving these books on the streets. On the other hand, others were looking for these books,” Ankaya mayor Alper Tasdelen told CNN. “We started to discuss the idea of creating a library from these books. When everyone supported it, this project happened.”
All the books that are found are sorted and checked for condition. If they pass, they go on the shelves. Today, the library has over 6,000 books that range from fiction to nonfiction and there’s a very popular children’s section that even has a collection of comic books. An entire section is devoted to scientific research and there are also books available in English and French. The collection has grown so large that the library loans books to schools and educational programs.
“Village school teachers from all over Turkey are requesting books,” Tasdelen told CNN. The government has to hire a full-time employee to manage the library.
This library is incredibly popular. It is frequently filled with the children of the city’s workers and students from nearby schools. There is a waiting room set up for readers and chess boards for the people who visit the library. You can even enjoy a cup of tea in the waiting room.
1. What does the underlined word “snowballed” in paragraph 2 probably mean?| A．Declined quickly. | B．Grew slowly. | C．Developed rapidly. | D．Worsened steadily. |
| A．Its great popularity. | B．Its potential significance. |
| C．Its huge collection of books. | D．Its wide variety of readers. |
| A．To raise people’s awareness of recycling. | B．To classify and check the donated books. |
| C．To expand the social influence of the library. | D．To meet the huge demand from rural teachers. |
| A．It’s an excellent place to enjoy tea. | B．It’s crowded with readers every day. |
| C．It needs to improve its management. | D．It provides a very considerate service. |
8 . Every year, as the surface water temperature off the United States mid-Atlantic coast rises steadily from late spring through the summer, a pocket of uncharacteristically cool and crisp water gets trapped at the bottom of the ocean. Packed with nutrients this thick band of cold water, known as the mid-Atlantic cold pool, is a vital home for shellfish species. Extending at its seasonal peak from Nantucket, Massachusetts, to Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, the cold poll creates a diverse ecosystem ranging from algae(海藻)to fish — and some of the most valuable shellfish fisheries in the United States.
Now, however, two pressures have scientists worrying about whether the cold pool will last. The first is no surprise: climate change. Over the past five decades, climates change has destabilized the cold pool, causing it to warm and shrink. Compared with 1968, the cold pool is now 13℃ warmer and has lost more than one-third of its area.
The second concern is 1ess certain. In 2023, the US federal government approved plans to install(安装)98 wind turbines(涡轮机)off the New Jersey coast, covering an area of more than 300 square kilometers. Yet putting so many turbines to the seafloor could have unexpected consequences for the cold pool. That’s why Travis Miles, a researcher at New Jersey’s Rutgers University, and his colleagues are investigating. So far, Miles and his colleagues can’t definitively say what will happen to the cold pool, saying more research is needed to assess how climate change and offshore wind, together, could affect the cold pool. However, their initial analyses suggest the cold pool should be fine — at least in normal conditions.
New Jersey’s offshore wind plans are strongly opposed mainly by fossil fuel-industry funded efforts. Miles worries that an overabundance of caution or fear of potential impacts, including on the cold pool, might slow down the development of renewable energy. “...it’s quite clear that climate change is far more damaging than installing wind farms,” he says. “I don’t think any scientist would argue with that.”
1. What do we know about the mid-Atlantic cold pool?| A．It forms in early spring. | B．It’s a band of cold near-bottom water. |
| C．It serves as a habitat of most sea species. | D．It extends from Nantucket to New Jersey. |
| A．Break down. | B．Get polluted. | C．Dry up. | D．Become smaller. |
| A．supportive | B．dismissive | C．overcautious | D．skeptical |
| A．The Cold Pool Plays a Role on species |
| B．Opinions Divide on Offshore Wind Farms |
| C．Scientists Eye Potential Risks to the Cold Pool |
| D．Renewable Energy Helps to Race Against Climate Change |
9 . A carbon capturing device, called Orca, began operating in Iceland in September. The machine was invented and made by a Swiss company called Climeworks. The name comes from the Icelandic word orka which means energy.
Orca can pull carbon dioxide out of the air and send it deep into the ground, where it is turned into stone. The device is made up of four sections which look like giant air conditioners stacked together. Each section contains 12 large fans that suck air from outside into steel compartments.
Inside, the air passes through a filter (过滤器) which gathers the carbon dioxide. It is then heated to a high temperature so the carbon dioxide can be collected from the filter. Then, the carbon dioxide is mixed with water and put deep in the ground into a type of rock called basalt. Basalt causes the carbon dioxide mixture to turn into stone after two or three years.
Orca is an experimental device. It was built to demonstrate that it is possible to permanently remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. It can remove 4, 000 metric tons of carbon dioxide from the air each year. That’s about the same amount as the emissions produced by 850 cars in a year. In order to remove enough carbon dioxide to make a big difference to global warming, much larger devices like Orca would have to be built in many countries around the world.
Some environmental activists say governments should spend more time and money on reducing the amount of greenhouse gas we produce each year, instead of investing in carbon capture methods. But others say that, in order for countries to meet their goal of net zero emissions by 2050, they will need to do both: reduce new emissions and remove the carbon dioxide already in the air.
1. What’s the purpose of designing Orca?| A．To conserve energy. | B．To achieve zero emissions. |
| C．To protect natural resources. | D．To remove carbon dioxide in the air. |
| A．Orca. | B．The basalt. | C．The air. | D．Carbon dioxide. |
a. Sucking the air. b. Collecting the carbon dioxide.
c. Mixing with water. d. Filtering and heating.
e. Putting into the ground.
| A．a, d, b, c, e | B．a, c, d, b, e | C．a, d, c, b, e | D．a, b, c, d, e |
| A．Reducing emissions is more important. |
| B．It might result in new pollution. |
| C．The technology is not mature. |
| D．It doesn’t work efficiently. |
10 . This 3-mile stretch of sand and tide pools beneath a castle of 80-foot cliffs is a California tourism poster if there ever was one. Nothing disturbs the perfect, sunny view, except — once you’re aware of them — microplastic particles (颗粒). But you have to look close-on-your-hands-and-knees close-to see one. And once you do, you see another and another — so many that you may not think of this, or any beach, the same way again. These tiny preproduction plastic balls that manufacturers (生产商) melt down to form everything have been escaping factories, container ships, trains, trucks — and public notice — for decades.
The 2- to 3-millimeter, multicolored balls are a subset (子集) of microplastic-plastic particles less than 5 millimeters in size. Microplastic particles accumulate where water takes them, and they’ve been found on shorelines of every continent.
Dr McReynolds is an environmental scientist who’s now joined a global movement studying their trail into the environment. Establishing a baseline count of the presence of microplastic particles — and, more broadly, any microplastics — is the focus of Dr McReynolds’ scientific study here. Charting the count, noting tide, current, and weather conditions will show if amounts are increasing, and perhaps at what rate and why. That knowledge, he says, can inform solutions to plastic pollution such as regulation of their use.
“What are you doing? Picking up trash?” asks a steady stream of beach walkers whenever Dr McReynolds’ crew walks onto the beach and sets up equipment. These are teachable moments for Dr McReynolds.
One recent morning he told some beach walkers how microplastic particles are believed to absorb toxic chemicals, and — because they resemble fish eggs — are eaten by fish and birds and enter the food chain. Almost right on time, a seagull hopped up to a plastic-coated photo of microplastic particles and hungrily pecked (啄食) at it.
Will his work help save the world? Dr McReynolds waves a finger at that idea, “I won’t ever use that word — I won’t save the world from this pollution problem. Preserve it, yes. We want to take care of it.”
1. What do we know about microplastic particles from paragraph 1?| A．They are too small to be seen. | B．They have been ignored for long. |
| C．They are products of plastic balls. | D．They can be made into almost everything. |
| A．Classifying plastic particles into subsets. | B．Finding solutions to plastic pollution. |
| C．Charting the tides and currents of oceans. | D．Creating a data collection for microplastics. |
| A．The interesting teachable moments. | B．The spread of poisonous chemicals. |
| C．The harmful effect of microplastic particles. | D．The beauty of the photo of microplastic particles. |
| A．To save the world. | B．To protect the earth. | C．To educate the public. | D．To provide solutions. |
