1 . When glaciers melt, they leave behind infertile (贫瘠的) landscapes. But a new study found that within just three years, such exposed land was restored by llamas (美洲驼), whose activity enriched the soil and promoted plant growth. By the foot of Peru’s melting Uruashraju glacier, researchers partnered with local farmers to farm llamas on four specific plots. For three days a month from 2019 to 2022, the llamas grazed (吃青草) the plots, fertilizing them with waste and spreading seeds from droppings.
As is the case worldwide, glaciers are disappearing in Peru’s Cordillera Blanca mountains at an alarming rate. And as the ice melts, nearby ecosystems wither: They lose access to summertime supplies of freshwater and sometimes encounter harmful acidic minerals in rocks once covered by the glaciers.
Llamas may help count er some of these effects. Their transformation of the land, as seen in the new study, could reduce rock weathering and help the soil hold onto more dampness, thus limiting the acidic runoff that can poison farmers’ crops. Such pollution is one reason why local farmers partnered with the researchers. The animals’ behavior could one day even generate new grasslands as soil quality improves.
The idea that animal grazing may positively impact a landscape is not new. Nor is rewilding, the push to bring key species back to their native ecosystems, unique to the Cordillera Blanca mountains. In Finland, for example, the Indigenous Sami are working to reintroduce reindeer in deforested land, potentially restoring it. But the size and speed of the changes the llamas helped bring about surprised the researchers. From 2021 to 2022, the average amount of plant cover in the llama plots grew from about 9 percent to nearly 14 percent—faster than it did in four control plots. The research underscores the valuable roles animals play in shaping landscapes, says ecologist Kelsey Reider of James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Va., “The animals themselves are doing a lot.”
1. What did the new study find?| A．Llamas could help improve ecology. | B．Llamas needed to be exposed to soil. |
| C．Llamas might survive poor situation. | D．Llamas were able to stop ice melting. |
| A．Expand. | B．Arise. | C．Integrate. | D．Worsen. |
| A．Because they longed to be more learned. |
| B．Because they profited from the research. |
| C．Because they wanted to keep llamas away. |
| D．Because they failed to know llamas’ behavior. |
| A．Llamas restore the forest in Finland. | B．Wildlife helps a lot in restoring nature. |
| C．The idea of rewilding isn’t common. | D．The research should collect more data. |
2 . Beavers(海狸), like humans, change their surroundings to fit their needs. Known as nature’s engineers, they tear trees down to build homes to live in and dams to raise water levels for protection from endemics. Dams also slow water’s flow while blocking sediment(沉积物)that would otherwise flow downstream. The resulting wetlands often attract wildlife diversity where none had existed. There are challenges, though. Beaver dams sometimes cause flooding, and most people prefer trees alive and upright.
Communities face a delicate balancing act, learning to coexist with beavers. Last winter, many people enjoying Winston Path became beaver fans as one furry family transformed Swallow Pond into an oasis for birds, frogs, turtles and deer.
Yet such activity caused concern. As beavers worked, they raised water levels about five feet. The increased depth allows beavers to survive underwater if the pond ices over. But county officials were concerned about how higher water would affect the soil bank supporting Winston Path.
To find a good balance between protecting the path and the beavers, the county introduced a “beaver baffle”- a pond leveler. Beavers often rush to fill holes in their dams. Baffles stabilize water levels by creating a hidden exit for high water to escape through the dam, unnoticed by the beavers.
People love the beavers but they also love the mature trees. Recently, Catherine Jones,18, organized a tree-caging event-putting wire cloth around large tree trunks to discourage beavers from biting them. It also protects people from injury due to random trees falling. “We cover the trees we don’t want them to eat, while planting periodically others they like,” said Jones. “We need to learn to give up a little of our wants to share the Earth’s resources.”
Swallow Pond’s 2023 project will restore proper water depth and improve wildlife habitat without creating problems for the path. The balancing act continues.
1. What is the first paragraph mainly about?| A．Where beavers’ favorite surroundings are. |
| B．What effects beavers have on their habitat. |
| C．Why beavers are called nature’s engineers. |
| D．How beavers help attract wildlife diversity. |
| A．Swallow Pond would flood often. |
| B．Sediment would flow downstream. |
| C．The popular path might be damaged. |
| D．Beavers might have to live underwater. |
| A．They build beaver dams. | B．They fill holes in the dams. |
| C．They cover all the trees. | D．They plant trees beavers like. |
| A．Biological diversity. | B．Harmonious coexistence. |
| C．Prevention of natural disasters. | D．Preservation of wildlife habitat. |
3 . There was a strange stillness. The birds, for example—where had they gone? Many people spoke of them, puzzled, and disturbed. The feeding stations in the backyards were deserted. The few birds seen anywhere were dying; they trembled violently and could not fly. It was a spring without voices. On the mornings that had once throbbed (跳动) with the dawn chorus of robins, catbirds, doves, jays, wrens, and scores of other bird voices, there was now no sound; only silence lay over the fields and woods and wetlands.
Rachel Carson was a scientist by profession. But these lines from the opening chapter of her 1962 book Silent Spring, A Fable for Tomorrow, show her talent as a writer. By imagining a world without birds, she aimed to alert not only the scientific community but also the public to the damaging effects of human activity on ecosystems—in particular, to the harmful use of pesticides, such as DDT. She believed that the chemical industry was knowingly causing harm to plants, animals and even humans, and wished to see pesticides used in a more responsible, limited and carefully monitored way.
Carson urged people to make themselves aware of the facts and do something about the situation. Silent Spring contains a lot of scientific research and case studies. The book details the gypsy moth wipeout programme, which killed birds. The Book also gives examples of other wipeout programmers that did nothing to reduce the problems they were originally designed to solve.
Carson’s message caused a great increase in environmental awareness. Its impact was immediate and far-reaching: The use of DDT was banned and the Environmental Protection Agency(EPA)was established in the US. Silent Spring was therefore regarded as a milestone in the launch of the green movement in the Western world.
Her book not only changed the world; half a century later it remains a book that deserves to be reread today. Unless we do listen to Rachel Carson’s warning, one day we may wake up to the strange and quiet horror of another silent spring.
1. What is the function of the first paragraph?| A．To describe a real scene. |
| B．To recommend a scientist. |
| C．To introduce the topic. |
| D．To provide background information. |
| A．DDT was doing harm to the ecosystems on earth. |
| B．Pesticides had been used both responsibly and carefully. |
| C．The human activities did not cause damage to natural ecosystems. |
| D．The lines from the opening chapter of her book were just a fantasy. |
| A．It was seen as a far-reaching green movement. |
| B．It prohibited the use of pesticides around the world. |
| C．It brought the author a good reputation around the world. |
| D．It raised people’s consciousness of environmental protection. |
| A．Concerned. | B．Disapproving. |
| C．Doubtful. | D．Objective. |
1. 简要介绍你所在的校园环保社团；
2. 指出校园塑料大量使用的情况；
3. 发出减少塑料使用的倡议。
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。
Dear fellow students,
I am head of the School Environmental Protection Club.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________The School Environmental Protection Club
5 . Ensuring that your home is as energy-efficient as it can possibly be is essential. Take the steps listed below, and you’ll be living in an energy-efficient home in no time.
The old boilers (锅炉) are not as energy-efficient as the very latest models in this field.
Only when you know how much energy you use can you take action to be less wasteful and more resourceful in this instance.
With just twelve years (now seven years) to go until climate change alters earth forever, now is the time for you to play your part in protecting the planet that you live in.
| A．The investment demanded in this instance is significant. |
| B．Taking such action will help you adapt to climate change. |
| C．Generally, this type of device will cost between £25 and £40. |
| D．It means you should try to keep track of energy consumption. |
| E．By putting the above advice into practice, you’ll be green soon. |
| F．Most of your home’s wasted energy will escape through your roof. |
| G．It might be high time to update yours if you haven’t done so for years. |
6 . Every week, Angela looked at her recycling bin, filled with shampoo bottles and plastic containers, with mixed feelings. Sure, it was a lot of plastic, but it was going to be recycled. Or so she thought. Then, her husband sent her some articles revealing that less than 6% of the country’s plastic gets recycled. She was shocked.
Determined to cut back on her plastic consumption, Angela got a starter kit from a company selling refillable household cleaners (家用清洁器). In it were tablets, containing concentrated hand soap as well as glass and bathroom cleaners, and four empty containers. She filled each one with tap water, then dropped in a tablet and watched it dissolve. If she was happy with the cleaners, she would order more tablets but reuse the containers. No new plastic required.
Given plastic’s harmful effects on the environment, nearly three quarters of Americans say they are trying to reduce their reliance on single-use plastic, according to Pew Research Center. Since plastic is everywhere and avoiding it altogether is extraordinarily difficult, some, like Angela, have revived a once-customary practice: refilling containers. Household cleaners seem particularly prepared for a refill revolution, for many can be easily concentrated and reconstituted (with water. If just 10% to 20% of plastic packaging are reused, a report from the World Economic Forum estimates, the amount of plastic waste entering the ocean will be cut in half.
Not everyone is as enthusiastic, though. Jan Dell, a chemical engineer, noted that many cleaning products are packaged in PET or HDPE, two types of plastic with relatively high recycling rates. So she is less concerned about them but far more concerned about the packaging of other products. “What companies should be focusing on is everything else that isn’t recyclable, that is single use and that often becomes plastic pollution,” she said, pointing to plastic bags and cups. “This is just a classic example of big corporations doing something to attract people’s attention over here on something that’s not the main issue to distract from all the single-use plastic they’re pushing out.”
1. Why is Angela mentioned?| A．To promote a tablet. | B．To lead in the topic. |
| C．To clarify a concept. | D．To recommend a kit. |
| A．Float over water. | B．Turn over in water. |
| C．Change color in water. | D．Mix with water. |
| A．Critical. | B．Favourable. |
| C．Conservative. | D．Unconcerned. |
| A．A chemistry paper. | B．An academic report. |
| C．A lifestyle magazine. | D．A cleaner advertisement. |
China has scaled up policy to protect and restore the environment around the Yangtze River, putting
A policy document
Despite improvements to the Yangtze’s water quality, the rise of non-point source pollution
The treatment of pollution is another priority, as the government looks to install tighter controls over pollutants discharged by chemical factories and promote
8 . The South Bronx is one of the poorest and most polluted places in America, with smog-choked freeways and smelly wastewater treatment plants.
“We’re a dumping ground,” Omar explains. “All the garbage from the rest of New York City ends up here.”
But Omar started looking at garbage in a different way. “A lot of what people throw away is perfectly good,” he says. “Just look at that stuff from construction sites — doors, sinks, toilets. People will buy those things. It’s only called garbage because somebody threw it away.” Omar was just out of college and working for an environmental group called Sustainable South Bronx when he started considering how to get this “good garbage” to people who could use it. Instead of destroying old things, why not clean them up and resell them? Why not hire people in the community to do the work? Better yet, why not make this business a “cooperative,” which means the people working in the business own it and share the profits?
Out of this, Omar started the first cooperative in the country dedicated to reusing construction waste. To start his business, Omar put up flyers along the truck-jammed, trash-filled neighborhood streets, looking for people to work with him. He soon found four other dedicated workers. They rented a warehouse and started looking for donations of used materials.
In April 2008, Omar’s cooperative, ReBuilders Source, opened its business and began selling construction supplies — at reasonable prices — to neighborhood builders and home owners. With the help of city officials, he also began planning a new training program to help local residents learn the skills to get good jobs that help the environment and even start their own cooperatives. Workers were trained to carefully take buildings apart so that things like doors and windows can be reused instead of being smashed and sent off to a landfill. Deconstructing buildings this way could be a huge industry with many good jobs for people who need them.
“If you have a use for something,” Omar says, “it’s no longer waste.”
1. Why is the South Bronx mentioned in the first paragraph?| A．To arouse readers’ interest. | B．To serve as the background information. |
| C．To contrast with the other districts. | D．To introduce a famous place. |
| A．To provide jobs for local people. | B．To deal with dumped rubbish. |
| C．To increase cooperation among neighbors. | D．To make money from garbage. |
| A．Idealistic and business-minded. | B．Creative and action-oriented. |
| C．Practical and self-focused. | D．Devoted and iron-hearted. |
| A．Knowledge starts with practice. | B．One good turn deserves another. |
| C．Four eyes see more than two. | D．Kill two birds with one stone. |
9 . Only a “cloud” away is how residents at the Dzilam reserve in Mexico think of the distance between Latin America and China, despite their geographical remoteness.
The “cloud” isn’t the one hanging up in the sky. What the residents refer to is in fact cloud technology, which has been applied to wildlife conservation in this Mexican reserve.
In recent years, with cloud technology, technicians and ecologists from China and its trans-Pacific partners have been able to work hand in hand under the Belt and Road Initiative to protect endangered species and their habitats in Mexico.
Home to many endangered species in Mexico, the Dzilam reserve, known for its biodiversity-rich habitats, has started to witness ecosystem degradation (衰退) over the years due to human activities and climate change. In 2002, the jaguar, the only big cat left in the reserve, was listed as “Near Threatened” on the IUCN Red List.
Local communities and environmentalists have tried to track the habitat of jaguars, but have found it rather difficult: These animals are often hidden in vast forests, rarely leaving obvious traces, making it hard to observe them under natural conditions.
To better protect wild animals and biodiversity, the Tech4Nature Mexico project was launched in the Dzilam reserve. The project collects video data from cameras recording 24 hours a day in the Dzilam reserve to monitor the biodiversity of the area and uses acoustic (声学的) technology to understand the existence of species and the health of ecosystems. The research team would use Huawei’s Al model to identify the areas where the big cat appeared by identifying sounds, studying their living habits and developing management plans to protect the species. In addition, when a threat is detected, the system immediately sends a real-time alarm with the location to local forest guards through an app for rapid intervention.
From September 2022 to May 2023, local experts, with the help of Huawei Cloud, have identified 119 species in the Dzilam reserve, including 88 species of birds, 22 species of mammals, five species of reptiles and four species of amphibians, of which 34 species are on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. They have also spotted at least five jaguars in the reserve.
Omelia Trejo, a resident of the Dzilam community, said their dream is “protecting jaguars for a lifetime,” but they worried that in the future, children might only see jaguars in photos. “Thanks to this project, our dream has come true.”
1. What does the underlined word “cloud” in paragraph 1 refer to?| A．A typical weather phenomenon. | B．A networked computing technology. |
| C．The cloud above the Dzilam reserve. | D．The distance from Mexico to China. |
| A．Lack of local community’s support. | B．Disapproval from environmentalists. |
| C．A few clearly recognizable tracks. | D．Challenges in natural observation. |
| A．The urgent need for conservation. | B．The challenges of species protection. |
| C．The success of Tech4Nature Mexico project. | D．The diversity of species in the Dzilam reserve. |
| A．Positive | B．Doubtful | C．Unconcemed | D．Neutral |
10 . Record sea ice loss caused a mass die-off of emperor penguin chicks in part of Antarctica last year, strengthening predictions that the world’s largest penguin will soon be in danger of extinction.
Unlike other penguins, emperors breed (繁殖) on sea ice rather than land.Male emperor penguins hatch the eggs during the Antarctic winter. The furry grey chicks need stable sea ice until December to grow their black waterproof feathers and gain enough muscle to swim. If they go into the water before they develop feathers, chicks can drown or freeze to death.
In February, the area of sea ice around Antarctica reached the lowest extent ever observed. After much of the ice began breaking up late last year, four out of five habitats in the hard-bit central and eastern Bellingshausen Sea suffered a total breeding failure, with no chicks surviving to the feather growing period. In mid-November, the sea ice there broke up, forcing the penguins to abandon the habitat and most if not all of their chicks.
A research team from Oxford Brookes University monitored populations by spotting penguin faeces (排泄物) in satellite photos. Emperor penguins tend to stay close, walking in a tight group to stay warm in temperatures as low as -60°C.The buildup of the habitat’s faeces stains the ice so brown that it can be seen from space. Once a habitat has been identified, researchers can count the individual penguins in very high-resolution satellite images.
The observations add weight to modelling predictions that 90 percent of emperor penguin habitats could be extinct or past the point of no return by 2100 if current rates of warming continue. While habitats can lose chicks in heavy storms or when severe winds break up the sea ice, this is the first-time widespread breeding failure has been linked to disappearing ice.
“Failure is the norm, but complete failure across a whole region, that’s not normal,” says Tim at Oxford Brookes University. “Will this impact the population? It really depends on how often it happens.”
1. What was the result of the ice breaking last year?| A．The area of the sea reached the lowest point ever. |
| B．Emperor penguins left the habitats with their chicks. |
| C．Emperor penguins had to search for food themselves. |
| D．Most emperor penguins chicks studied failed to survive. |
| A．By counting the penguins. |
| B．By making the images clearer. |
| C．By spotting brown stained ice. |
| D．By collecting penguins’ faeces. |
| A．The area suffered breeding failure for the first time. |
| B．Severe storms caused the extensive breeding failure. |
| C．The total failure has made emperor penguins extinct. |
| D．The frequency of ice breaking needs to be controlled. |
| A．The main causes of global warming. |
| B．The exlinet emperor penguin habitats. |
| C．Emperor penguins’ severe breeding failure. |
| D．Health problems of emperor penguin chicks. |
