The Hangzhou Asian Games,
Sustainability (持续性) has been
2 . As a child in the 1970s, Prigi would swim, play and bath in the waters of the Surabaya River that flowed near his home. The water of the flowing river was clean enough to safely drink, and so clear that he’d look down and see his toes touching the sandy bottom of the river.
Prigi left his home in 1994 to study biology at Airlangga University. During a visit home two years later, Prigi was shocked to find the once clear river now dark brown and smelly. The river bed felt slimy (黏滑的) under his feet. Worse still, after only a very short swim, he itched (痒) all over.
Prigi set up a study group to find out why. The group studied the river, doing water sampling, and collecting information about the kinds of birds, insects, micro-organisms and fishes that still lived in and around the river. Tests confirmed they all had a range of heavy metals in their systems, such as zinc, lead and mercury, which were from harmful chemical waste from a paper factory built in the 1990s.
In 2003, Prigi launched the Surabaya River Detective Program to teach children how to collect environmental data, to observe and record the population of insects, micro-organisms, and fish in the river. Around 800 children, who take on the title of “river warrior”, have participated in the program and created informational books, posters, films, and press releases to gain the attention of the public and the government. In April 2008, the local governor set a maximum daily limit for chemical waste, and required all companies to release only treated wastewater into the river. Today, the Surabaya River is much clearer and children have even started to swim in the river.
Much of Prigi’s success has come from raising awareness among locals of the role the river plays in their lives. Today, locals work with scientists and local authorities to protect the river’s biodiversity wonders for future generations.
1. What aspect of the Surabaya River surprised Prigi in 1996?| A．Changeable color. | B．Dangerous river bed. |
| C．Decreased water level. | D．Serious water pollution. |
| A．Heavy metals influenced biodiversity. |
| B．The paper factory was to blame for pollution. |
| C．The Surabaya River was home to many rare species. |
| D．Chemical waste caused serious diseases among humans. |
| A．By drafting regulations. | B．By spreading information. |
| C．By conducting researches. | D．By clearing pollutants away. |
| A．The River Guardian | B．The Crying Surabaya River |
| C．Disturbing Heavy Metal Pollution | D．Innovative Environmental-friendly Campaign |
3 . Be a Green Child
What does it mean to be green? “Green” is more than just a colour.
Reduce It!
Reuse It!
Sometimes people call ours a “throwaway society”. That means that we re a little too willing to throw away old things and buy new ones.
Recycle It!
Recycling has never been easier. Many communities will pick it up right in front of your house and some towns even require it. Recycled goods go to a recycling centre, where they can be turned into new cans, bottles, and paper.
Enjoy It
It’s true that rubbish and pollution are problems, but the Earth remains a huge and beautiful place that’s ready for you to explore.
| A．If so, get out there and get your hands dirty. |
| B．Turn off the water when you’re brushing your teeth |
| C．You can watch with pride as your garden plants grow. |
| D．It also means taking special steps to protect the environment. |
| E．When you use less of something, you do a good thing for the Earth. |
| F．You can start locally by visiting the naturally beautiful places in your cities. |
| G．Many times, even if you no longer need something, someone else just might. |
注意：1. 写作词数应为80左右；2. 可适当补充细节，使行文流畅。
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5 . My mom is one of the least wasteful people I know. She often brings her basket to the market to carry food.
Reuse your containers
A lot of low-waste solutions require buying special containers. But you don’t need to spend money on them.
Save what you can
There are many things in your household you can save before dropping them. Maybe you can repair an old pair of jeans instead of buying a new pair. Or maybe you can cut up old T-shirts into rags (抹布).
Depend less on pre-packaged (包装) foods
Once you start noticing how much rubbish you produce at home, you can start to see places to cut down on rubbish elsewhere. Bring your own reusable fork to a restaurant that uses single-use plastic utensils (餐具). Or ask your local waiter to fill up your glass coffee cup instead of a paper one.
| A．You can do much cooking at home |
| B．Save part of your meal for the next day |
| C．Often, food comes in wasteful packaging |
| D．Look for ways to cut waste outside the home |
| E．You can also live a low-waste lifestyle like this |
| F．You’ll save as much as you can in such a creative way |
| G．Instead, figure out a way to reuse the waste you have produced |
6 . Wildlife conservation is the practice of protecting plant and animal species and their habitats. As part of the world’s ecosystems, wildlife provides balance and stability to nature’s processes. Wildlife conservation is aimed to ensure the survival of these species and educate people on living sustainably with other species.
The number of people has grown to more than eight billion today, and it continues to rapidly grow. The economic growth endangers the habitats and existence of various types of wildlife around the world, particularly animals and plants that may be displaced for land development, or used for food or other human purposes. This threat is at top of the list and means natural resources are being consumed faster than ever by the billions of people on the planet. The introduction of invasive species from other parts of the world is another threat to wildlife. Other threats include climate change, pollution, fishing and hunting.
International organizations like the World Wildlife Fund, Conservation International, Wildlife Conservation Society and the United Nations work to support global animal and habitat conservation on many different fronts. They work with the government to establish and protect public lands, like national parks and wildlife protection areas. They help write legislation(法规), such as the Endangered Species Act(ESA)of 1973 in the United States, to protect various species. They work with law enforcement to charge those with wildlife crimes. They also promote biodiversity to support the growing human population while preserving existing species and habitats.
National Geographic Explorers, like conservation biologists Camille Coudrat and Titus Adhola, are working to slow the extinction of global species and protect global biodiversity and habitats. Environmental filmmakers and photographers, like Thomas P. Peschak, are essential to conservation efforts as well, documenting and bringing attention to endangered wildlife all over the world.
1. Which is a goal of wildlife conservation according to the text?| A．To stop introducing invasive species. | B．To encourage harmonious coexistence. |
| C．To control the number of world people. | D．To increase the use of natural resources. |
| A．Hunting. | B．Human activity. | C．Pollution. | D．Climate change. |
| A．The activities of protection areas. |
| B．The importance of biodiversity promotion. |
| C．The relevant efforts of international organizations. |
| D．The great impact of wildlife crimes on ecosystems. |
| A．The necessity of legislation. |
| B．The wildlife conservation’s achievements. |
| C．The individuals’ contributions to the environment. |
| D．The statistics about the wildlife conservation efforts. |
7 . The rainforests are alive with the sound of animals. Besides the pleasure of the din (喧嚣), it is also useful to ecologists. If you want to measure the biodiversity of a piece of land, listening out for animal calls is much easier than looking for tracks in the undergrowth. But such “bioacoustic (生物声音的) analysis” is still time-consuming, and it requires an expert pair of ears.
In a paper published on October 17th in Nature Communications, a group of researchers led by Jörg Müller, an ecologist at the University of Würzburg, describe a better way: have a computer do the job. Smartphone apps already exist that will identify birds, bats or mammals simply by listening to the sounds they make. Their idea was to apply the principle to conservation work.
The researchers took recordings from across 43 sites in the Ecuadorean rainforest. Some sites were relatively uncultivated, old-growth forests. Others were areas that had recently been cleared for grazing or cacao planting. And some had been cleared but then abandoned, allowing the forest to regrow. Sound recordings were taken four times every hour, over two weeks. The various calls were identified manually by an expert, and then used to construct a list of the species present. As expected, the longer the land had been free from agricultural activity, the greater the biodiversity it hosted.
Then it was the computer’s turn. The researchers fed their recordings to artificial-intelligence models that had been trained, using sound samples from elsewhere in Ecuador, to identify 75 bird species from their calls. “We found that the AI tools could identify the sounds as well as the experts,” says Dr Müller.
Of course, not everything in a rainforest makes a noise. Dr Müller and his colleagues used light-traps to catch night-flying insects, and DNA analysis to identify them. To their relief, they found that the diversity of noisy animals was a reliable proxy for the diversity of the quieter ones.
The results may have application outside ecology departments, too. Under pressure from their customers, firms such as L’Oreal, a make-up company, and Shell, an oil firm, have been spending money on forest restoration projects around the world. Dr Müller hopes that an automated approach to checking on the results could help monitor such efforts, and give a standardised way to measure whether they are working as well as their sponsors say.
1. What can we learn about Bioacoustic analysis?| A．It makes animal calls attractive. | B．It requires special skill and time. |
| C．It measures biodiversity easily. | D．It applies to many research fields. |
| A．Researchers trained AI models to imitate animal calls. |
| B．AI tools can identify bird species as well as the experts. |
| C．Agricultural activities led to a decrease in biodiversity. |
| D．Researchers used AI tools to conserve rainforests well. |
| A．Accelerator. | B．Assumption. | C．Formation. | D．sign. |
| A．Identifying the sponsors. | B．Evaluating the biodiversity. |
| C．Monitoring the effectiveness. | D．Establishing ecology departments. |
8 . Since the 1920s, a little-known policy called parking minimums has shaped many Americans’ life. In major cities, this meant that any type of building needed to reserve a certain number of parking spaces to accommodate anyone who might visit.
But as the country attempts to cut carbon emissions (排放), we should rethink what transportation and public space look like, especially in cities. Earlier this month, the city of Austin, Texas, became the latest community to undo parking minimums.
“If we want half of all trips to be in something other than a car, then we can’t, as a city, in my opinion, demand that every home or business have at least one parking space for each resident or customer,” said Zohaib Qadri, the Austin city council member who introduced the measure. Reducing dependency on cars was a huge push for the initiative in Austin. Qadri hopes the measure also will lead to a more sustainable city.
The undoing of this law could pave the way for cities to build denser (密集的) housing, increase public transit options, and reduce their carbon emissions, according to Donald Shoup, an engineer and professor. “It isn’t just the housing crisis and climate change; it’s a traffic jam; it’s local air pollution; it’s the high price of everything—except parking,” said Shoup.
Climate change and air pollution are particularly costly outcomes, with both estimated to cost the US billions of dollars every year. Parking spots, meanwhile, can run in the tens of thousands of dollars to construct, with one estimate putting that figure at almost $30, 000 per spot.
But undoing parking minimums does not mean that all parking will disappear overnight. It means that any off-street parking built will not need to meet any minimum standard.
“Austin is the same city that it was two weeks ago,” said Shoup. “It’s going to take quite a while for that city to really get the benefits of their parking space reforms. And so it just removes a roadblock and a barrier to other reforms.”
1. Why was parking minimums policy deserted in Austin?| A．To make room for green belts. | B．To help tackle climate problems. |
| C．To respond to residents’ demand. | D．To ease the heavy traffic. |
| A．Parking space provides convenience. |
| B．Cars are used for half of people’s trips. |
| C．Each home needs more than one parking space. |
| D．Reducing parking space can reduce dependency on cars. |
| A．Supportive. | B．Concerned. | C．Doubtful. | D．Disappointed. |
| A．The Harm of Climate Change | B．The Origin of Parking Minimums |
| C．The Reason for Too Many Emissions | D．A Possible Way to Fight Climate Change |
1. 保护环境的重要性；
2. 如何低碳生活；
3. 发出倡议。
注意：
1. 词数80左右；
2. 可适当增加细节，以使行文连贯。
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10 . Warming seas across the globe are endangering coral reefs(珊瑚礁), a key ecosystem that supports sea life to live .
As a possible way to save them from extinction, scientists have recently frozen and revived groups of adult corals for the first time, according to a recent study.
Freezing biological materials, or “cryopreserving” them, refers to keeping them in a deep freeze for long periods without affecting the cell’s viability(活性), according to the Science Times website.
Researchers in the US experimented with freezing pea-sized pieces of a common coral in Hawaii. After removing the microbes on the corals, they closed the corals in metal containers filled with a chemical solution that helped control ice growth.
When the corals reached a temperature of around-200℃, the remaining water in the corals solidified into a glassy form. The corals were still alive, with their life-driving functions becoming extremely slow. After being cryopreserved for a few minutes, the researchers pulled the corals out and placed them in warm water. In two minutes, they started consuming oxygen -a sign of them staying alive.
Previously, researchers had already successfully cryopreserved coral larvae(幼虫), according to a study in 2018. However, the larvae can only be collected when corals spaw(产卵), which happens just a few nights each year. “That’s putting a lot of eggs in one basket,” US marine scientist Liza Roger told Science News.
This breakthrough offers more hope to the world’s corals, said Roger. However, there’s more work to be done. A few days after thawing, the corals became “stressed out” from the process and were killed by the bacteria they normally live in harmony with. The researchers are working on using medicine to help them survive for a longer period of time.
1. What is the purpose of the recent study?| A．To bring dead corals back to life. |
| B．To freeze and revive coral larvae. |
| C．To find a way to preserve corals. |
| D．To study the conditions of coral growth. |
| A．They died temporarily. |
| B．Their life functions slowed down. |
| C．They remained alive and unchanged. |
| D．They fed on microbes in the containers. |
| A．It is not a reliable solution. |
| B．It needs a large number of eggs. |
| C．It holds promise for restoring corals. |
| D．It requires overly expensive technology. |
| A．Finding a suitable freezing medium. |
| B．Identifying the bacteria on the corals. |
| C．Maintaining the coral’s health after thawing. |
| D．Expanding the collection of coral larvae. |
