Life on earth depends on water, and there is no substitute for it．The current assumption is that our basic needs for water — whether for drinking, agriculture, industry or the raising of fish will always have to be met．Given that premise （前提）, there are two basic routes we can go: more equal access to water or better engineering solutions．

Looking at the engineering solution first, a lot of my research concentrates on what happens to wetlands when you build dams in river basins, particularly in Africa． The ecology of such areas is almost entirely driven by the seasonal changes of the river — the pulse of the water． And the fact is that if you build a dam, you generally spoil the downstream ecology． In the past, such problems have been hidden by a lack of information．But in the near future, governments will have no excuse for their ignorance．

The engineers’ ability to control water flows has created new kinds of unpredictability, too． Dams in Africa have meant fewer fish, less grazing and less floodplain (洪泛区) agriculture — none of which were expected． And their average economic life is assumed to be thirty years． Dams don’t exist forever, but what will replace them is not clear．

The challenge for the future is to find new means of controlling water． Although GM technology (转基因) will allow us to breed better dry-land crops, there is no market for companies to develop crops suitable for the micro-climates of the Sahel and elsewhere in Africa． Who is going to pay for research on locally appropriate crops in the Third World?

1．What’s the main idea of this passage?

       A．The engineering solutions to water resource and their limitation．

       B．The challenge for the future．

       C．The basic means of controlling water．

       D．The challenge for developing crops．

2．Which of the following statements is NOT true for meeting our basic needs for water?

       A．Water resource should be used more reasonably．

       B．More dams should be built in river basins．

       C．More wetlands should be protected from destruction．

       D．More dry-land crops could be developed in Africa．

3．The author suggests that governments will have no excuse for their careless ignorance in the future because        ．

      A．The ecological destruction will be known to the public by researchers

       B．The ecological destruction will no longer be a problem in the future

       C．The future is an information age

       D．Governments will face greater challenge in the future

4．The author mentions all the problems caused by dams EXCEPT          ．

       A．fewer fish                                                     B．less grazing land

       C．less floodplain agriculture                               D．less farming land

5．The last sentence probably implies that           ．

       A．No one will invest in developing locally appropriate crops in Africa

       B．Researchers have no interest in developing dry-land crops

       C．Research on locally appropriate crops in the Third World may be profitable

       D．There is less water resource in the Third World

 The state of Florida is best known for its beaches and plam trees. But a good mass of it is swampland. The famous Everglades, a slow-moving sheet of water full of plants and alligators(短吻鳄), cover much of the southern part of the state. To the north, the Okefenokee, which is partly in Florida and mostly in neighboring Georgia, is a true swamp(沼泽) with its own alligatoers and snakes and even beautiful orchids.

It was formed when waters from an ancient ocean receded and a large sandbar blocked most of the water flow to the sea. Left behind was an 1,800-square-kilometer swamp.

There’s no big city within 200km, but tourists from all over the world manage to find it. They all want to know about its unusual name. Okefenokee is a Miccosukee Indian word meaning land of trtembling earth. Way back in the swamp are small, floating islands, called hammocks, which one can walk across. But they tremble. Standing on them is like trying to balance on a floating mattress(床垫).

The Okefenokee, which is already nearly filled with plants, would probably dry and become just another forest, were it not for range fires that come along every once in a while and burn out rotton vegetation（植被）. So the water in this protected National Wildlife Refuge keeps moving—slowly, very slowly.

45．According to the passage, Everglades lies__________.

  A．mainly in Georgia

  B．south of Okefenokee

  C．north of Florida

  D．near National Wildlife Refuge

46．The underlined word “receded”in the second pargaraph probably means__________.

A. dried up    B．floated away    C．poutred down    D．drew back

47．The third paragraph mainly tells us__________.

    A．where Okefenokee is located   

B. what the size of the Okefenokeeis

    C．how Okefenokee gets its special name

    D. how shaking islands come into being

48．What can be inferred according to the text?

  A．Range fires prevent Okefenokee from drying up.

  B．Hammocks tremble constantly but do not move.

  C．Okefenokee’s alliagtors attract many tourists.

 D. Florida and Georgia cover 1,800 km in total.

Watercolor is the oldest paints known. It dates back to the early cave men who discovered they could add lifelike qualities to drawings of animals and other figures on the walls of caves by mixing the natural colors found in the earth with water.

Fresco （壁画）, one of the greatest of all art forms, is done with watercolor. It is created by mixing paints and water and applying these to wet plaster （灰泥）. Of the thousands of people who stand under Michelangelo’s heroic ceiling in the Sistine Chapel, very few know that they are looking at perhaps the greatest watercolor painting in the world.

The invention of oil painting by the Flemish masters in the fifteenth century made fresco painting go downhill, and for the next several centuries watercolor was used mainly for doing sketches（草图）or as a tool for study. It was not until the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that English painters put back watercolor as a serious art form. The English have a widely-known love for outdoors and also small private pictures. The softness of watercolor had a remarkably strong attraction for them.

The popularity of watercolor continued to grow until the twentieth century. The United States passed England as the center for watercolor, producing such well-known watercolor artists as Thomas Eakins and Andrew Wyeth.

1．The purpose of the passage is to introduce ________.

       A．the gradual weakness of fresco painting

       B．oil’s power or influence over watercolor

       C．the discovery of watercolor in England

       D．the start and development of watercolor

2．In the 16^th and 17^th centuries the artists thought ________.

       A．watercolor was softer, and thus better.

       B．Oil painting lasted longer, and was better.

       C．Watercolor wasn’t fit for finished works

       D．Watercolor was too hard to use in any works.

3．According to the passage, watercolor painting was put back in England because ______.

       A．it was easy to use outdoors               B．it was a strong medium（媒介）

       C．it was extremely bright in color.           D．it was suited for popular tastes

4．What would the next paragraph most probably talk about?

     A．The works of famous US watercolor artists.

     B．Modern American oil painters.

     C．The weaknesses of oil as popular paints

     D．Techniques of producing watercolor