1 . The largest living land animal in Asia, Asian elephants once roamed grasslands and rainforests across the continent. Prior to the 1700s, habitats for the now-endangered animals were relatively stable (稳定的). But a new study shows that more than 64% of historic suitable elephant habitat across Asia has been lost.
Researchers found there was a rapid growth in habitat loss of Asian elephants from the year 1700, which is related to the expansion of European colonization (殖民化) of the region. During that time, logging, road-building, resource extraction and deforestation (森林砍伐) increased, and farming need more land that might otherwise have been home to wildlife. The industrial revolution in the middle of the last century also drove greater habitat loss.
Habitat loss means elephants are migrating (迁徙) from their usual living area, creating challenges for human communities that have little experience with elephants. In 2021, millions of people were frightened by a herd of elephants that migrated out of a protected area in China’s southwest Yunnan Province and walked more than 500 kilometers, destroying crops, wandering through towns and causing more than a million dollars’ worth of damage.
With the elephants not having enough habitat, there is increased potential for human-elephant conflict (冲突) — a situation that shouldn’t be accepted as unavoidable and one that can be avoided with proper planning. “We are going to reach a tipping point in which cultures of no conflict toward one another get replaced by cultures of antagonism ( 敌 对) and violence — by both species. We have to relieve this situation,” said Shermin de Silva, a UCSD faculty member who led the research team.
If the elephants can’t find suitable habitats, they will become endangered and near extinction (灭绝), which has an effect on the whole ecosystem. This is because elephants help spread seeds and vegetation cover (植被). Their habitats also include several other species of animals and plants. In the wake of satisfying their need for large spaces, and enough water and food, plenty of other species can survive. When we protect the elephant, we also protect thousands of other species.
1. What do we learn about the migrating elephants?| A．They lost their way home. |
| B．They enjoyed feeding on crops. |
| C．They caused many troubles for the locals. |
| D．They were heading southwest in search of water. |
| A．Lessen. | B．Adopt. | C．Bear. | D．Plan. |
| A．To explain the significance of species diversity. |
| B．To stress the necessity of protecting elephants. |
| C．To provide suggestions on restoring elephant habitats. |
| D．To show the impact of the elephant population on the ecosystem. |
| A．The Past of Asian Elephants |
| B．Causes of Habitat Loss of Asian Elephants |
| C．Reasons for Protecting Elephants |
| D．The Survival Crisis of Asian Elephants |
2 . Some yogurt containers in your grocery store might be looking a little different soon. Pure Dairy yogurt will be sold in cups made mostly of paper. Pure Dairy is a food company which specializes in making yogurt which is often sold in plastic containers. But plastic, unlike paper, can take hundreds of years to break down, leading to long-lasting waste. Now, Pure Dairy’s first-ever paper cups will replace the plastic cups previously used to hold its yogurt products.
“People have been asking for a paper cup, and we welcome this challenge to start reducing our plastic use, and to activate a conversation about how we can drive change together. I think we all have a role to play in protecting our planet.” said Hamdi Ulukaya, Pure Dairy’s founder and chief executive officer.
Pure Dairy currently produces yogurt, creamers, coffee and plant based drinks. Many of these products already come in paper-based, recyclable packaging. But its yogurt products had always been sold in plastic. That’s why the company has spent the past two years working to create a paper cup. They wanted it to hold yogurt just as well as the plastic cups do. The paper cup is expected to hit grocery shelves at the end of this year, which is 80 percent paperboard made from renewable materials.
The latest paper cup still has a thin plastic lining to maintain the quality of the product and prevent the yogurt from seeping into the packaging. Although packaging with mixed materials is often not recyclable, Pure Dairy will continue working with partners to make it happen. This group works with businesses to make their products and packaging more sustainable, meaning they want to use resources so that they will continue to be available in the future. The yogurt company says it hopes to put more sustainable packaging on shelves all over the country which will use less plastic and more paper.
1. Why will the company sell yogurt in paper containers?| A．To reduce waste. | B．To create a new packaging. |
| C．To recycle the plastic containers. | D．To specialize in making paper cups. |
| A．It can be recyclable. | B．It is made of plastic and paper. |
| C．It doesn’t satisfy the public’s demands. | D．It is not the joint effort of the companies. |
| A．Paper cups may replace the plastic cups. | B．A lot of paper products will be available. |
| C．A renewable material will replace yogurt. | D．The company hopes to produce more packaging. |
| A．Yogurt Containers Are Made of Plastic in the Future. |
| B．We All Have a Role to Play in Protecting our Planet. |
| C．Pure dairy is Working with Partners on Developing More Earth-friendly Paper Cups. |
| D．Pure Dairy has replaced the plastic cups with paper cups at present. |
3 . It’s a hot summer afternoon in St Louis and Dawn Weber’s yard is filled with life. A catbird flies over groups of bees as Dragonflies skip across a pond. At just over a quarter of an acre, the carpet of native plants around Ms. Weber’s house is home to about 38 species of insects and 99 species of birds. “I really enjoy seeing the life,” she says. “There’re about 300 species of plants in the yard.”
Ms. Weber is among the growing number of homeowners who have traded manicured lawns(修整的草坪) for native and wildlife garden. The trend follows growing awareness of the need for species conservation in local ecosystems.
“The plants and animals around us run the ecosystem,” says Doug Tallamy, professor at the University of Delaware. But he adds, “We’re losing our insects, and were losing our plants and losing our birds. This is a disaster. And it stems from the fact that we’ve taken away the native plants or used incorrect plants. Not all plants support the insects that run the food web s that feed the birds and everything else. This breakdown of the food web has led to what environmental experts call a mass extinction event.”
But conservation experts think anyone with a yard can be part of the solution. America has more than 40 million acres of land used as lawns. Although green lawns may look pleasing. Professor Tallamy calls them “dead scape” land that does not support biodiversity or the local ecosystem.
Native gardens of any size in residential (住宅的) areas form “conservation passages” that support local wildlife. Local insects depend on these conservation passages and in turn support creatures higher on the food chain. If you add all of the residential landscape, it’s far more than the national park systems combined. If enough people could devote part of their landscape to the native plants that have developed with the insects in their ecosystem, we could reduce the impact and maybe even stop the ma ss extinction.
1. What aspect does Paragraph 1 try to show about Dawn Weber’s yard?| A．Its diversity of species. | B．Its beautiful scenery. |
| C．Its abundant food supply. | D．Its popularity in St Louis. |
| A．Local creatures have died out. | B．Insects have ruined the food web. |
| C．Local plants have disappeared. | D．The balance among animals has failed. |
| A．To praise the efforts to protect the local wildlife. | B．To show the great potential of native gardens. |
| C．To explain the function of conservation passages. | D．To stress the advantage of the national park systems. |
| A．Building Your Own Conservation Areas | B．Local Lawns Are More Than Just a View |
| C．How to Recover Food Webs of Residential Areas | D．Native Gardens Are Repairing Local Ecosystem |
Beijing is the capital city of China. It
The loss of grassland and scrubland is already having a major influence
“Cranes are rare and valuable animals in China. At Miyun, a festival
“More cooperation (合作) between
5 . Inside a fishbowl, the goldfish — a species of carp native to East Asia, bred for aesthetic delight and traditionally believed to bring good fortune — is among the easiest of pets to keep. But released into the wild, the seemingly humble goldfish, freed from glass boundaries, can grow to large proportions. They can even kill off native marine wildlife and help destroy fragile and economically valuable ecosystems.
“They can eat anything and everything,” said Christine Boston, an aquatic research biologist with Fisheries and Oceans Canada. Over the past several years, Ms. Boston and her colleagues have been tracking invasive goldfish in Hamilton Harbour, which is on the western tip of Lake Ontario (安大略湖), about 35 miles southwest of Toronto.
Their study, published last month in the Journal of Great Lakes Research, could help pinpoint goldfish populations for culling, said Ms. Boston, who is the lead author. “We found out where they are before they start spawning (产卵),” she said. “That’s a good opportunity to get rid of them.”
The fast-growing female goldfish, Ms. Boston noted, can also reproduce several times in one season. “They have the resources,” she added, “and they can take advantage of them.” Their football-shaped bodies can swell to a size that makes them too large a meal for predators (捕食者) — up to about 16 inches long. The feral goldfish are also destructive, uprooting and consuming plants that are home to native species.
Nicholas Mandrak, a professor of biological sciences at the University of Toronto Scarborough, studies in the “dramatically increase” of the wild population in the past two decades. Their spawning explosion, he said, resulted partly from people in densely-populated areas releasing pets in urban ponds. He added, environmental managers tend to forget the goldfish. “They just assume, ‘It’s been there for 150 years — there’s nothing we can do about it.’”
The problem is not unique to Canada. In Australia, a handful of unwanted pet goldfish and their offspring took over a river in the country’s southwest. And the discovery of football-size creatures in a lake in 2021 even led British officials to beg their citizens: “Please don’t release your pet goldfish into ponds and lakes!”
People wrongly believe that because goldfish are “small and cute” they won’t pose a problem when released into the wild, said Anthony Ricciardi, a professor of invasion ecology at McGill University in Montreal.
Goldfish, he added, are just a small part of a vast invasion of non-native species whose outcomes can be unpredictable, and in some cases, are worsened by climate change.
“Under human influence, beasts are moving faster farther in greater numbers, reaching parts of the planet they could never reach before,” he said. “We’re talking about the redistribution of life on Earth.”
1. Which of the statements about the goldfish is correct?| A．Their place of origin is Canada. | B．They are capable of reproducing. |
| C．They will grow well over 16 inches. | D．They only invade Lake Ontario. |
| A．Killing | B．Controlling | C．Catching | D．Observing |
| A．Citizens wrongly set free the fish. | B．Climate change has a negative impact. |
| C．The environmental management is absent. | D．The food increases in habitats. |
| A．Now goldfish are turning into wild monsters. |
| B．Now goldfish are on the way to become a global issue. |
| C．Now goldfish are attracting scientists to study in. |
| D．Now goldfish are threatening the Great Lakes. |
1.水污染的原因
2.水污染的后果
3.如何控制水污染
注意：写作词数不少于80。开头和结尾已给出，不计入总词数。
Water pollution
There are various causes of water pollution.
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7 . Monkfish are low in calories and they are easy to cook. They can be cut into pieces, mixed with egg whites, cornflour and salt, and then put into boiling water for a few minutes. There is only one problem with monkfish: they are ugly. With their eyes sticking out and wide mouths full of sharp teeth, they are frightening.
In the Netherlands, fishermen who caught them used to throw them back. They are still usually sold without their heads, but the days of throwing them away are long gone. Japanese diners love the fatty liver; while Italians may still call them toad tails, that doesn’t stop them from eating the fish. People have been encouraged to eat more monkfish, as well as other unattractive creatures — in order to ensure the biodiversity of the ocean environment.
There are more examples for sea animals going from “purposely avoided” to “willingly consumed”. In America, lobsters used to be fed to prisoners — a result of their abundance but also, no doubt, because they are difficult to eat and look frightening. Not until the late 19th century did they become fantastic dish. Today they are so desirable that Maine, where most American lobsters are caught, has the images of these creatures printed on many of its vehicles.
Sometimes fashion goes the other way. Turtles were plentiful in early America, but in the 19th century they became fashionable: few foods were more recommended than turtle soup. Americans ate some species of turtle nearly to extinction. Yet today turtle-eating is more closely associated with remote and uncultured areas.
Among cooking choices, people prefer the rare and the beautiful one than the unattractive one. But such narrow-minded food choices can have bad results: some species may not survive human preference for them. Better to stare into monkfish’s eyes than to contribute to the permanent loss of a species.
1. How were monkfish treated in the Netherlands?| A．They were abandoned by local fishermen. | B．They were popular due to their fatty livers. |
| C．They were called toad tails from time to time. | D．They were considered a danger to the ecosystem. |
| A．To stress its abundance in America. | B．To make a comparison with monkfish. |
| C．To prove prisoners used to be fed on seafood. | D．To show people’s food habits keep changing. |
| A．Turtle-eating has been out of date now. |
| B．Turtles have completely disappeared in America. |
| C．Turtles were purposely avoided among food choices. |
| D．Turtle-eating was against fashion in the 19th century. |
| A．To introduce rare undersea wildlife. | B．To encourage people to eat seafood. |
| C．To explain why people dislike monkfish. | D．To call for the protection of biodiversity. |
8 . Johannes Fritz, an Austrian biologist, needed to come up with a plan again if he was going to prevent his rare and beloved birds from going extinct.
To survive the European winter, the northern bald ibis needs to migrate south for the winter over the Alps. But shifting climate patterns have delayed when the birds begin to migrate and they are now reaching the mountains too late to make it over the peaks, locking them in an icy death trap. Determined to save them, he decided to teach the birds a new, safer migration route by guiding them himself in a tiny aircraft. He was confident that he could succeed in this daring, unconventional plan.
Some 400 years ago, the Europeans hunted these birds without stopping and devoured the last in the wild, causing the birds to disappear entirely from the wild. When Mr. Fritz was born 56 years ago, the northern bald ibis could be found in Europe only in captivity (圈养).
Mr.Fritz has spent his career reintroducing the birds into the wild. Through years of trial and error, he learned to fly like a bird. He modified (改装) a lightweight aircraft so it would fly at speeds slow enough for the birds to keep up. In 2004, he led the first flock from Austria to Italy, and has since led more migrations. But the route he originally taught the ibises does not work successfully. With climate change warming the area where the birds summer, they now start their migration at the end of October instead of the end of September. The trip is expected to take about six weeks, “Still, we’re optimistic that it’ll work,” said Mr. Fritz.
His family and colleagues witnessed the risks he was taking. “But the unavoidable risks are necessary,” Mr. Fritz said. “It’s not so much a job, but my life’s purpose.”
1. What was Johannes Fritz’s plan?| A．To shorten bald ibises’ migration route. |
| B．To lead bald ibises to migrate on a new route. |
| C．To better the climate patterns for bald ibises. |
| D．To find out a safer destination for bald ibises. |
| A．Destroyed. | B．Abused. | C．Released. | D．Raised. |
| A．Owing to the long time it consumes. |
| B．For the slow speed of his modified aircraft. |
| C．Because of the toughness along the first route. |
| D．Due to higher temperatures in the summer habitat. |
| A．Honest. | B．Innovative. | C．Straightforward. | D．Demanding. |
9 . As the planet gets hotter, the need for cool living environments is becoming more urgent. But air conditioning is a major contributor to global warming since units release powerful greenhouse gases and use lots of energy.
Now, researchers from McGill University, UCLA and Princeton have found in a new study an inexpensive, sustainable alternative to mechanical cooling with refrigerants (制冷剂) in hot and dry climates, and a way to relieve dangerous heat waves during electricity blackouts.
The researchers set out to answer how to achieve a new benchmark (基准) in passive cooling inside naturally conditioned buildings in hot climates such as Southern California. As an attempt, they examined the use of roof materials that radiate (辐射) heat into the cold universe, even under direct sunlight, and how to combine them with temperature-driven ventilation (通风). These cool radiator materials and coatings are often used to stop roofs overheating. Researchers have also used them to improve heat rejection from chillers. But there is untapped potential for integrating them into architectural design more fully, so they can not only reject indoor heat to outer space in a passive way, but also drive regular and healthy air changes.
“We found we could maintain air temperatures several degrees below the current surrounding temperature, and several degrees more below a reference ‘gold standard’ for passive cooling,” said Remy Fortin, lead author and PhD candidate at the Peter Guo-hua Fu School of Architecture. “We did this without sacrificing healthy ventilation air changes.” This was a considerable challenge, considering air exchanges are a source of heating when the aim is to keep a room cooler than the outside.
The researchers hope the findings will be used to positively impact communities suffering from dangerous climate heating and heatwaves. “We hope that materials scientists, architects, and engineers will be interested in these results, and that our work will inspire more complete thinking for how to integrate breakthroughs in radiative cooling materials with simple but effective architectural solutions,” said Remy Fortin.
1. What might cause researchers to look for an alternative to air conditioning?| A．The severe shortage of energy. | B．The greenhouse effect of air conditioning. |
| C．The increasing dangerous heatwaves. | D．The need for cool living environments. |
| A．To obtain ideas for their research. | B．To prevent roofs from overheating. |
| C．To find the best material for roofs. | D．To make roofs well ventilated. |
| A．Uncaring. | B．Disapproving. | C．Positive. | D．Worried. |
| A．An effective architectural solution |
| B．A major contributor to global warming |
| C．A sustainable alternative to air conditioning |
| D．A more complete thinking for cooling materials |
10 . The heavy use of fossil fuels over the last 150 years has released massive amounts of greenhouse gases, which has caused the Earth to warm up. Scientists say large amounts of CO2 must be removed from the atmosphere and stored. Plants and trees do this naturally. But there’s so much CO2 in the atmosphere that just planting trees and protecting forests won’t solve the problem. And, when these plants and trees die, the carbon they’ve stored gets released again. That means humans need to come up with ways of removing carbon from the air and storing it. This is called Direct Air Capture(DAC).
A company called Heirloom has just opened the first DAC plant in the United States. Heirloom’s process uses limestone to capture CO2. The company heats up the limestone to separate out the CO2, which is then locked away in concrete. Heirloom uses renewable electricity to produce the heat, so the process doesn’t produce more CO2. The process is extremely expensive though. The new plant can remove 1,000 tons of CO2 a year. That’s a tiny amount compared to how much carbon needs to be removed from the atmosphere.
Graphyte is another US company working on DAC. The company collects unwanted plants. It dries this “biomass” completely so that it can’t break down. Graphyte then strikes the dried plants into small bricks which are trapped in a special wrapper and buried deep underground. Graphyte says its process doesn’t use much energy and can work anywhere. The company claims the cost is merely less than $100 to capture a ton of CO2.
Not everyone is excited about carbon removal. Some people worry that it will take too long to make a difference. Others worry that focusing on removing carbon could take attention away from more important climate actions, like switching from fossil fuels to renewable energy. But experts say the decision isn’t to do one or the other. The world needs to end fossil fuel use and pull carbon out of the air.
1. What can be the impact of the death of plants according to Paragraph 1?| A．Their leaves take in more carbon. |
| B．There is an increase of carbon in the air. |
| C．It leads to the death of animals dependent on them. |
| D．The carbon they absorb disappears with their death. |
| A．A course studying the atmosphere. |
| B．An association dealing with climate change. |
| C．A new method beneficial for the environment. |
| D．A newly developed material for a greener world. |
| A．Its operation procedures are simpler. | B．It achieves its goal at a lower expense. |
| C．Its products are intended for construction. | D．It works with the aid of renewable energy. |
| A．It’s necessary to work along both lines. | B．Carbon removal is a win-win solution. |
| C．Environmental issues are about to be resolved. | D．Advantages always coexist with disadvantages. |
