1 . Hundreds of years ago, life was harder than it is today. People didn't have modern machines.
Life today has brought new problems. One of the biggest problems is pollution. Water pollution has made our rivers and lakes dirty. It kills our fish and pollutes our drinking water. Noise pollution makes us talk louder and become angry more easily. Air pollution is the most serious kind of pollution to all living things in the world.
Cars, planes and factories all pollute our air every day. Sometimes the polluted air is so thick that it is like a quilt over a city. This kind of quilt is called smog.
Many countries are making rules to fight against pollution. Factories must now clean their water before it is thrown away, and they mustn't let dirty smoke go into the air.
We need to do many other things. We can put waste things in the dustbin and do not throw them on the ground. We can go to work by bus or with our friends in the same car. If there are fewer people driving, there will be less pollution.
Rules are not enough. Every person must help to fight against pollution.
1. Hundreds of years ago, life was much harder than it is today because_________| A．there were many problems | B．there were too many people |
| C．there were wars now and then | D．there were no modern machines. |
| A．noise pollution | B．water pollution | C．air pollution | D．waste things |
| A．The air. | B．The city. | C．The quilt. | D．The smog. |
| A．clean water after it is thrown away | B．throw waste things in the dustbin |
| C．let dirty smoke go into the air | D．encourage more people to drive to work |
2 . Pollution is one of the biggest problems in the world today. In many places, rubbish is thrown into lakes and rivers.
In some cities, the air is filled with pollution.
If we do not act to improve the environment, more living things will be killed by pollution.
If we can do these, we will make the world a better place to live in.
| A．This makes some old people and children ill. |
| B．As well as people, animals are also harmed by pollution. |
| C．We can make our lakes and rivers cleaner and cleaner. |
| D．It’s time for all of us to take action right away! |
| E．Because of this, these places have already been polluted. |
| F．Trees reduce dust and help keep the air clean. |
| G．A few of us should take action to protect the environment. |
3 . Noise pollution has a long-term effect on tree populations that may persist even after the sources of noise are removed, according to research published Wednesday.
Man-made noise from industry and the building of infrastructure such as roads and pipelines has increased greatly since the middle of last century. While previous research has documented the short-term effect noise has on tree populations as it scares off pollinators (传粉者) such as insects and animals, few studies have covered the long-term effect.
Researchers in the United States looked at tree populations in New Mexico that had been “hearing”a high level of man-made noise for 15 years. They found 75 percent fewer pinyon pine seedlings (矮松苗) in noisy places than quiet ones.
Then they looked at other places in New Mexico, where sources of noise had recently been added and then removed, and examined how populations recovered. The team assumed that populations of the trees — in this case pinyon seedlings — would recover as the pollinators would return to the places once the noise had disappeared. Instead, they found a long-term drop in seedling numbers as the birds refused to revisit the places.
“The effects of human noise pollution are growing into these woodland communities,” said Clinton Francis, lead researcher from California Polytechnic State University. “What we’re seeing is that removal of the noise doesn’t necessarily immediately result in a recovery of ecological function.”
Jennifer Phillips, co-author of the research, said the findings showed how the effect of noise pollution could put pollinators off even after the noise is removed. “Animals like the birds that are sensitive to noise learn to avoid particular areas.” said Phillips. “It may take time for animals to come back to pollinate trees in these previously noisy areas, and we don’t know how long that might take.”
As governments continue to face growing evidence of the damage to nature caused by urbanization (城市化), Phillips held that the influence of noise pollution should also be factored into planning decisions.
1. What does the underlined word “persist” mean in paragraph 1?| A．Recover. | B．Decrease. | C．Last. | D．Disappear. |
| A．By studying cases in New Mexico. |
| B．By challenging the previous research. |
| C．By recording the routines of pollinators. |
| D．By following the sources of noise pollution. |
| A．Noise pollution kills large numbers of birds. |
| B．Governments should take measures to remove noise. |
| C．Ecological recovery contributes to the removal of noise. |
| D．It’s hard to tell when birds will revisit previously noisy places. |
| A．Removing noise enables plants to grow better. |
| B．Pollinators play a role in increasing plant population. |
| C．Noise pollution has long-term effects on plant populations. |
| D．Man-made noise does great harm to woodland communities. |
4 . A report has warned of a "destructive" decline(减少) in freshwater fish, with nearly a third in danger of extinction(灭绝). Conservation groups said 80 species were known to have gone extinct, 16 in the last year alone.
The report said, for example, populations of migratory fish have fallen by three-quarters in the last 50 years. Over the same time period, populations of larger species, known as "megafish", have crashed by 94%. In UK waters, the sturgeon and the burbot have disappeared, salmon are disappearing and the European eel remains extremely endangered.
According to the WWF(世界自然基金会), much of the freshwater fish decline is driven by the poor state of rivers, mostly as a result of pollution. Besides, dams and waste water are also the factors. It has called on the government to restore freshwater habitats to good health through proper carrying out of existing laws, strengthening protections in the Environment Bill and championing a strong set of global targets for the recovery of nature.
Dave Tickner, from WWF, said freshwater habitats are some of the most full of life on earth, but as this report shows they are in "destructive" decline around the world. "If we are to take this government's environmental promises seriously, it must get its act together, clean up our rivers and restore our freshwater habitats to good health," said the organization's chief adviser on freshwater.
Carmen Revenga of The Nature Conservancy said freshwater fish are a diverse and unique group of species that are not only important for the healthy functioning of our rivers, lakes and wetlands, but millions of people, particularly the poor, also depend on them for their food and income.
"It's now more urgent than ever that we find the collective political will and effective cooperation with private industries, governments, NGOs(Non-Governmental Organizations) and communities, to carry out nature-based solutions that protect freshwater species, while also ensuring human needs are met," she said.
1. How many species went extinct last year?| A．80. | B．16. | C．96. | D．64. |
| A．Overfishing. | B．River pollution. | C．Global warming. | D．Natural disasters. |
| A．megafish. | B．burbot. | C．the European eel | D．migratory fish. |
| A．By examples. | B．By argument. | C．By comparison. | D．By discussion. |
5 . If humans were truly at home under the light of the moon and stars, we would go in darkness happily, the midnight world as visible to us as it is to the vast number of nocturnal (夜间活动的) species on this planet. Instead, we are diurnal creatures, with eyes adapted to living in the sun’s light. This is a basic evolutionary fact, even though most of us don’t think of ourselves as diurnal beings. Yet it’s the only way to explain what we’ve done to the night: We’ve engineered it to receive us by filling it with light.
The benefits of this kind of engineering come with consequences—called light pollution—whose effects scientists are only now beginning to study. Light pollution is largely the result of bad lighting design, which allows artificial light to shine outward and upward into the sky. Ill-designed lighting washes out the darkness of night and completely changes the light levels—and light rhythms—to which many forms of life, including ourselves, have adapted. Wherever human light spills into the natural world, some aspect of life is affected.
In most cities the sky looks as though it has been emptied of stars, leaving behind a vacant haze (霜) that mirrors our fear of the dark. We’ve grown so used to this orange haze that the original glory of an unlit night—dark enough for the planet Venus to throw shadows on Earth-is wholly beyond our experience, beyond memory almost.
We’ve lit up the night as if it were an unoccupied country, when nothing could be further from the truth. Among mammals alone, the number of nocturnal species is astonishing. Light is a powerful biological force, and on many species it acts as a magnet (磁铁). The effect is so powerful that scientists speak of songbirds and seabirds being “captured” by searchlights on land or by the light from gas flares on marine oil platforms. Migrating at night, birds tend to collide with brightly lit tall buildings.
Frogs living near brightly lit highways suffer nocturnal light levels that are as much as a million times brighter than normal, throwing nearly every aspect of their behavior out of joint, including their nighttime breeding choruses. Humans are no less trapped by light pollution than the frogs. Like most other creatures, we do need darkness. Darkness is as essential to our biological welfare, to our internal clockwork, as light itself.
Living in a glare of our own making, we have cut ourselves off from our evolutionary and cultural heritage—the light of the stars and the rhythms of day and night. In a very real sense, light pollution causes us to lose sight of our true place in the universe, to forget the scale of our being, which is best measured against the dimensions of a deep night with the Milky Way—the edge of our galaxy—arching overhead.
1. Which of the followings has the similar meaning to the underlined word “diurnal” in Paragraph 1?| A．Everyday. | B．Routine. |
| C．Daytime | D．Nighttime. |
| A．provide examples of animal protection |
| B．show how light pollution affects animals |
| C．compare the living habits of both species |
| D．explain why the number of certain species has declined |
| A．light pollution does harm to the eyesight of animals |
| B．light pollution has destroyed some of the world heritages |
| C．human beings cannot go to the outer space |
| D．human beings should reflect on their position in the universe |
| A．The Magic Light. | B．The Orange Haze. |
| C．The Disappearing Night. | D．The Rhythms of Nature. |
6 . Darrell Blatchley, a marine biologist and environmentalist based in the Philippine city of Davao, received a call from the Philippines, Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (渔业与水产资源局) early Friday morning reporting a death of a young whale.
When the necropsy (尸检) was performed, Blatchley told NPR, he was not prepared for the amount of plastic they found in the whale’s stomach. “It was full of plastic nothing but nonstop plastic.” he said “It was filled to the point that its stomach was as hard as a baseball.” That means that this animal has been suffering not for days or weeks but for months or even a year or more,” Blatchley added.
Blatchley is the founder and owner of the D’Bone Collector Museum, a natural history museum in Davao. In the coming days, the museum will display all the items found in the whale’s system. Blatchley and his team work with the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources and other organizations to assist in rescue and recovery of marine animals.
“Within the last 10 years, we have recovered 61 whales and dolphins just within the Davao Gulf,” he said. “Of them, 57 have died due to man whether they took plastic or fishing nets or other waste, or gotten caught in pollution — and four were pregnant.”
Blatchley said he hoped that the latest incident would launch the issue of plastic pollution in the Philippines and across the globe. “If we keep going this way, it will be more uncommon to see an animal die of natural causes than it is to see an animal die of plastic,” he said.
1. What can be inferred from the second paragraph?| A．The whale was starved to death. |
| B．The dead whale must have swallowed a baseball. |
| C．Blatchley was very shocked at what he found. |
| D．Blatchley didn’t make preparations for the necropsy. |
| A．Waste collected from the ocean. |
| B．Things found in the whale’s body. |
| C．The whole system of the whale. |
| D．Many different tools of whaling. |
| A．Worrying. | B．Indifferent. |
| C．Inspiring. | D．Mild. |
| A．A Whale Found Dead of Plastic | B．Stand Up for Protecting Whales |
| C．Plastic Threatening Our Existence | D．Natural Death or Merciless Murder |
