1 . The Dead Sea is an amazing wonder of the world:the lowest exposed spot on Earth,where the water is so full of salt that bathers float right to the top.
But today the Dead Sea is drying up, and its banks are collapsing. The water level is dropping close to 4 feet every year. The main part of the lake is now around 950 feet deep—about 15%shallower, and a third of the surface area, compared to its shape half a century ago.
“You’ve seen a living disaster in front of your eyes,“ says Jake Ben Zaken, an Israeli who says he operates the only passenger boats on the Dead Sea.
As the lake recedes, it changes the landscape around it in both beautiful and harmful ways. Beautiful salt formations are revealed where the water dries up. But there are also terrible scenes of beaches and parking lots swallowed up by sinkholes along the shore.
Solutions have been proposed to replenish(填满)the Dead Sea, but no significant action has been taken to prevent its further destruction. Climate change makes recovery of the lake seem even further out of reach.
The Dead Sea is a landlocked lake that’s partly in Jordan, Israel and the Israeli-occupied West Bank. The lake—named the Dead Sea because it contains too much salt and is not suitable for aquatic(水生的)life—has been drying up for decades.
”It’s a human-made problem," say environmental researchers and officials. In a region where water is rare, Israel, Jordan and Syria in the last several decades have diverted(改道)the freshwater sources that feed the Dead Sea, for drinking water and irrigation. Plus, Israeli and Jordanian companies evaporate(蒸发)Dead Sea water to harvest its rich minerals for export. The part of the lake with Israeli hotels, a popular spot for tourists to float in Dead Sea water, is actually an artificial evaporation pool in the lake’s southern basin.
1. How deep was the main part of the Dead Sea 50 years ago probably?| A．About 800 feet. | B．About 1,000 feet. |
| C．About 1,100 feet. | D．About 1,300 feet. |
| A．Goes up. | B．Gets popular. | C．Flows over. | D．Becomes smaller. |
| A．The solutions to the problem. | B．The future of the Dead Sea. |
| C．The reasons for the problem. | D．The situation of the Dead Sea. |
| A．The Dead Sea Is Dying | B．The Dead Sea Is Recovering |
| C．The Dead Sea—a Salty Lake with Minerals | D．The Dead Sea—a Place for Tourists to Float |
2 . An environmental group in Colombia is leading a project to save wild areas in the San Lucas Mountains with the help of coffee growers.
Since 2016, San Lucas areas have been threatened by mining and coca (古柯) planting Gold miners and coca growers make more money than coffee farms. Now the group WebConserva helps link coffee farmers with coffee processors from around the country in order that they can earn more. At the same time coffee farms can serve as boarders around the forests to protect the biodiversity within.
To date, the project includes 10 families who farm 400 hectares of coffee plants. WebConserva said it hopes, in time, 200 families will be included. At that level. 20,000 hectares of untouched forest could be protected. The families promise not to cut down trees to expand their crops or to hunt wild animals. In return, they receive $300 for 125 kilograms of coffee.
Arcadio Barajas is among those taking part. His coffee farm sets up a barrier between cattle farms and forests where wild animals live, thus reducing the possibility of conflict between cattle farmers and wild animals. “Cutting down the forest to plant coca and killing wildlife were against my faith, and now I feel that growing coffee lets me be a good guard of the land,” he said.
Amnobis Romero is a former coca grower and miner. “Many families depended on illegal activities to support their children years ago. Now, we feel it a duty to look after this biodiversity and leave it for future generations,” he said. Activists want San Lucas to be protected as a national park, but the process has been slow. Carlos Valderrama, director of Webconserva, hopes the project can build production system that will last far into the future. “It protects forests, biodiversity and ecosystems at the same time as improving coffee growers’ quality of life,” he said.
1. What does the underlined word “they” in Paragraph 2 refer to?| A．Coffee farmers. |
| B．WebConserva members. |
| C．Gold miners. |
| D．Coca growers. |
| A．By increasing cattle farms. |
| B．By setting up a barrier. |
| C．Ry developing gold mining. |
| D．By encouraging coffee farming. |
| A．Families have enough money for their kids. |
| B．Coffee planting will last for several generations. |
| C．Coffee farming changed the former coca growers’ lives. |
| D．The project benefit the forests more than the local farmers. |
| A．Families protecting wildlife will get very rich. |
| B．WebConserva benefits ecosystems and local people’s life. |
| C．Gold mining and coca farming have been replaced rapidly. |
| D．San Lucas will develop into a national park in the near future. |
It was a lovely spring morning in the mountains of my home. Here was full of natural atmosphere. The sky was blue, the sun was warm, and the air was fresh. As driving along the winding road, I could see thousands of wild flowers in bloom. When I turned round, I slowed down as I saw some volunteers picking up garbage along the side of the road. I just smiled as I saw them doing some cleaning in spring for Mother Earth and my mind suddenly floated back in time to another spring morning long ago.
When my children were younger, I used to walk along a small route around the lake near my home. It was also on a spring morning that I noticed much garbage lying along the route. The next day, I brought a big garbage bag and started to slowly pick up the garbage along my way. All kinds of deserted objects lay all over the floor. There were pop cans, plastic water bottles, wrappers for candy bars, empty chip bags, pieces of broken fishing line and even an old shoe. Every time I stopped, I picked up a piece of garbage. And I even fished some garbage out of the edge of the water. By the time I circled the lake, the garbage bag had been nearly full.
Tired but happy, I put the bag in an empty garbage can. I stopped before I headed home and took one last look at the lake as the sun set. It looked more beautiful than ever and I felt like the angels were looking down upon it with me and sharing my smiles.
I always think that at times this world’s problems can seem overwhelming and you may wonder what you can do to make a difference. But the truth is that every good thing you do matters a lot! I do believe every time I stop to pick up a single piece of garbage, I can make a difference. As my children are adults now, I decide to spend more time protecting the environment.
注意：1.续写词数应为150左右；2.请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
I begin to encourage others to develop the environmental awareness.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Many days have passed, and the surroundings have improved a lot.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Denmark wants to make all domestic flights fossil fuel-free by 2030. Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen announced the goal in a New Year speech. Denmark
Most impressively of all, though, the country aims to reduce its carbon emissions
5 . Damon Carson calls himself a matchmaker (媒人) of the never-ending waste of American society, trying not to pair people with people, but things with people.
In the late 1990s, Carson was on break from business school in Vail, Colorado, when he discovered the vast world of waste. He began thinking about creating a secondhand store that would sell old materials and keep them out of being wasted. As a result, in 2010, his company, Repurposed Materials appeared.
For nearly ten years, his company, Repurposed Materials, has not been looking to recycle the waste he gets — breaking it down to make something new — but rather finding new homes for thrown-away goods in their original forms.
Carson, a husband and father of three adult children, is far from wasteful. Frugal is how he describes himself. The clothes he’s wearing all came from a charity shop; his truck was bought with 290, 000 kilometers driven.
“Why break something down, why melt something down, if it still has value?” he asks. An old oil-field pipe might be melted down and turned into a car bumper, but it still takes an amount of power to finish the complete change. Why not leave it as a steel pipe? Why not turn it into a fence post on a farm? The only cost is transport.
American industrial facilities create and throw about 7.6 billion tons of unwanted industrial materials every year. For the moment, Carson’s unique business finds new lives for millions of kilograms of industrial waste every year.
1. What is paragraph two mainly about?| A．Carson’s school lessons. |
| B．Carson’s journey to Colorado. |
| C．The start of Carson’s business. |
| D．The serious waste of materials. |
| A．Marketing wastes to people in need. |
| B．Breaking down the wasted goods. |
| C．Manufacturing industrial products. |
| D．Recycling the thrown-away stuffs. |
| A．Economical. | B．Poetic. | C．Tough. | D．Risky. |
| A．Well began, half done. |
| B．Innovative thinking counts. |
| C．One is never too old to learn. |
| D．Hard work will pay back. |
内容包括：
1. 简述图片内容；
2. 谈谈你的感想。
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。
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1.参加人员；
2.活动情况；
3.活动反响。
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。
A Trashion Show
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8 . Johan Ernst Nilson is an explorer. His 32 expeditions in 100 countries include biking from northern Europe to Africa, hiking across Alaska and climbing the highest mountain on each of the seven continents. This summer, Nilson completed his most challenging journey the Pole to Pole Expedition. He travelled about 21,750 miles through 17 countries, from the North Pole to the South Pole. “I go to remote areas where no person has ever set foot,” Nilson told TFK.
Nilson walked, sailed, skied, biked, and took a dogsled. Known as the “environmental explorer”, Nilson used forms of transportation that are not harmful to the environment. Nilson hopes the expedition, which will be featured in a movie and a book, both due out this winter, will inspire others to protect the planet.
It took Nilson about 18 months to complete the expedition. He faced dangerous situations, just as the early polar explorers did. He travelled through hurricanes. He endured extreme heat and cold. He fell through ice. He suffered cracked ribs and frostbite(冻伤). He was even chased by bears.
Eating properly was a constant challenge. The explorer, who covered about 60 miles a day, ate a variety of foods, such as fruit, meat, fish and vegetables. At one point, Nilson ran out of food. He wrote on his blog: “The North Pole is a different story. On an expedition on the ice, you have to eat anything you can find.”
In spite of the many challenges, Nilson insists that the expedition was well worth it. He was able to visit with groups such as UNICEF and the American Red Cross, to take part in the work that they do to help people all over the world. He is hopeful that his adventure will inspire others to take action to protect the planet.
Nilson says his big expedition days are now over, but he will continue to explore in other ways. “Exploration is reaching for the unknown, learning how to play the piano, learning a new language,” he says. Are you an explorer, too?
1. What does Nilson do besides expeditions?| A．He likes playing the piano. | B．He helps those who need help. |
| C．He likes learning foreign languages. | D．He likes visiting people. |
| A．become famous | B．attract people’s attention |
| C．inspire people to explore | D．protect the environment |
| A．Nilson suffered a lot and was in great danger. | B．Nilson liked travelling through hurricanes. |
| C．Nilson stood extreme heat and cold. | D．Nilson suffered freezing. |
9 . A Plastic Ocean is a film to make you think. Think, and then act. We need to take action on our dependence on plastic. We’ve been producing plastic in huge quantities. Drinking bottles, shopping bags and even clothes are made with plastic.
The film begins as a journey to film the largest animal on the planet, the blue whale. But during the journey the filmmakers make the shocking discovery of a huge, thick layer of plastic floating in the Indian Ocean.
In the film there are beautiful shots of the seas and marine life.
We make a shocking amount of plastic. Over 300 million tons of plastic are produced every year, and at least 8 million of those are thrown into the oceans. The results are very harmful, but it isn’t too late to change.
| A．It has raised public concern all over the world. |
| B．In conclusion, we only have one earth to live on. |
| C．But the film doesn’t only show the negative side. |
| D．These are contrasted with plastic rubbish thrown around. |
| E．Once you’ve seen the film, you’ll realize it is time to do our part. |
| F．This causes them to travel globally to look at other affected areas. |
| G．We live in a world full of plastic, and only a small amount is recycled. |
10 . From the lush green hill you can see Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia, in the distance. Populations of deer, rabbits and turtle live here. The air is stinky and the only signs that we are standing above a 24-metre (79 feet) deep landfill are the methane gas pipes rising from the grass.
Ljubljana is the first European capital to commit to going zero-waste. But fifteen years ago, all of its refuse went straight to landfill. “And that is expensive,” says Nina Sankovic of Voka Snaga, the city’s waste management company. “It takes up space and you’ re throwing away resources.”
So the city decided to change course.
It began in 2002 with separate collection of paper, glass and packaging in Roadside container stands. Four years later the city began collecting biodegradable waste door to door; separate collection of biowaste is set to become mandatory across Europe in 2023, but Ljubljana was nearly two decades ahead of the curve.
In 2013, every doorstep in the city received bins for packaging and paper waste. And, most controversially, scheduled collections of the residual waste were cut by half-forcing people to separate their rubbish more efficiently.
The results have been impressive. In 2008, the city recycled only 29.3% of its waste and was lagging behind the rest of Europe. Today that figure is 68%, and its landfill receives almost 80% less rubbish, putting it at the top of there cycling leader board of EU capitals. The Slovenian capital now produces only 115kg of residual waste per capital annually(the European city with the lowest figure is the much smaller Treviso, Italy, at 59kg).
1. What is the usage of the pipe rising from the grass?| A．A sign to show there is a deep landfill. | B．To emit gas rising from the grass. |
| C．To discharge methane from the deep landfill. | D．A water pipe to water grass. |
| A．Compulsory. | B．Typical. | C．Normal. | D．Reasonable. |
| A．Favorable. | B．Intolerant. | C．Doubtful. | D．Unclear. |
| A．Society. | B．Geography education. | C．Tourism. | D．Environmental protection. |
