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2020托福启航班结课测试(仅限电脑,请勿用手机参与)

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13. On clear still nights when the heat island ispronounced, a small thermal low-pressure area forms over the city.The word pronounced in the passage is closest in meaning to
A. examined
B. relative
C. strongest
D. darkest
21. One of the most importantphenomenaof the later Middle Ages was the growing availability of cheap paper.The word phenomena in the passage is closest in meaning to
A. traditions
B. occurrences
C. perceptions
D. consequences
24. Enabling farmers to speed their products to the East, railroads increased the value of farmland andpromoted additional settlement.The word promoted in the passage is closest in meaning to
A. encouraged
B. controlled
C. promised
D. predicted
The biggest climate-caused ecosystem shifts today are happening at the worlds most northern latitudes, where the temperature over the last century has been rising about two times faster than the global average. In the northernmost state of the United States, Alaska, for example, warming has paved the way fora spike in the numbers of spruce bark beetles. Bark beetles have been a pest to Alaskan white spruce trees for thousands of years, but their numbers were held in check by the cold climate, which forced the insects to hide in the bark of individual trees for most of the year. As the length of the warm season increased over the 1980s and 1990s, however, bark beetles had more time to fly from one tree to the next, burrow, and lay their eggs between the bark and the wood. The beetles had another thing going for them, too: a multi-year drought had weakened many of the spruce trees, leaving them vulnerable to attack. In the mid-1990s, the bark beetle population exploded, and over the next few years the pests wiped outwhite spruce forests over an area the size of the U.S. state of Connecticut. In the years since, the combined forces of a longer insect-breeding season and forest management practices that left forests overcrowded gave way to similar epidemics farther south. Large swaths of pine and spruce have been destroyed by insects in several other parts of the UnitedStates.
In the late 1990s, the effects of the bark beetle epidemicrippled throughout Alaskas white spruce ecosystem and affected virtually every population of living organisms, but not all of the impacts were negative. Fewer spruce trees meant a sunnier area in the forest below the treetops, which allowed grasses to move in and take hold. The grasses, in turn, changed the soil temperature, making the environment more friendly for some other types of vegetation. Animals that feed on grasses, including moose, elk, and some birds, also benefited. But the beetle infestation was bad news for organisms that rely on white spruce for their habitat, like hawks, owls, red squirrels, and voles. Voles a type of small, mouselike rodent are an especially vital part of the ecosystem because they help spread mycorrhizal fungi, which attach to the roots of plants and help them take in water and nutrients. Voles are also an important food for a number ofpredators.