10月15日托福阅读加试题预测
Title: 生物适应性
概述：主要介绍了沙漠中的动植物是如何适应极端环境的。首先说了沙漠最大的问题就是缺水，如何适应这种缺水环境就是各种动植物存活的关键。然后说了植物是如何适应缺水环境的：有些是周期性植物，只在湿度较高时才生长;常年生长的植物采取另一些办法，例如，叶子表面产生一层蜡质，减少水分蒸发;有些叶子成了刺;有些的根系特别发达;等等。然后，另起一段将动物是如何适应的：产生高盐度的尿液，调整呼吸，等等。随后，还对比了在沙漠和在极地生活的同一种动物的异同。
Title: 英国殖民美洲
概述：关于英国殖民者占领美洲大陆，比较了印第前者注重与自然的和谐发展，后者更想把英国的经验照搬。北美的原著民用不危害自然的方法进行砍伐树木，种植，狩猎。(但是事实上树木还是减少了)。后来英国殖民者进入，发现大片的土地空闲着，他们觉得浪费就开始修了一堆的东西。文章里面还引用了一段话来说明英国人想把这里变成另一英格兰。他们居住的地方都接近河流，为的是方便 shipment andtravel (这里有题)。殖民者想要完全的掌控自然环境，但是失败了，他们才慢慢转换了对于环境的看法。
词汇题 Mastery=control
10月15日托福阅读机经预测
环境类高频率托福阅读背景知识：
Title：The Climate of Japan
At the most general level, two major climatic forces determine Japan’s weather. Prevailing westerly winds move across Eurasia, sweep over the Japanese islands, and continue eastward across the Pacific Ocean. In addition, great cyclonic airflows (masses of rapidly circulating air) that arise over the western equatorial Pacific move in a wheel-like fashion northeastward across Japan and nearby regions. During winter months heavy masses of cold air from Siberia dominate the weather around Japan. Persistent cold winds skim across the Sea of Japan from the northwest, picking up moisture that they deposit as several feet of snow on the western side of the mountain ranges on Honshu Island. As the cold air drops its moisture, it flows over high ridges and down eastern slopes to bring cold, relatively dry weather to valleys and coastal plains and cities
In spring the Siberian air mass warms and loses density, enabling atmospheric currents over the Pacific to steer warmer air into northeast Asia. This warm, moisture-laden air covers most of southern Japan during June and July. The resulting late spring rains then give way to a drier summer that is sufficiently hot and muggy, despite the island chain’s northerly latitude, to allow widespread rice cultivation.
Summer heat is followed by the highly unpredictable autumn rains that accompany the violent tropical windstorms known as typhoons. These cyclonic storms originate over the western Pacific and travel in great clockwise arcs, initially heading west toward the Philippines and southern China, curving northward later in the season. Cold weather drives these storms eastward across Japan through early autumn, revitalizing the Siberian air mass and ushering in a new annual weather cycle
This yearly cycle has played a key role in shaping Japanese civilization. It has assured the islands ample precipitation, ranging irregularly from more than 200 centimeters annually in parts of the southwest to about 100 in the northeast and averaging 180 for the country as a whole. The moisture enables the islands to support uncommonly lush forest cover, but the combination of precipitous slopes and heavy rainfall also gives the islands one of the world’s highest rates of natural erosion, intensified by both human activity and the natural shocks of earthquakes and volcanism. These factors have given Japan its wealth of sedimentary basins, but they have also made mountainsides extremely susceptible to erosion and landslides and hence generally unsuitable for agricultural manipulation.
...
Title：Hunting and the Setting of Inner Eurasia
Inner Eurasia refers to the large continental area extending from Russia in the west to the Pacific Ocean, and to the north of Iran, India, and most of China. The first systematic colonization of parts of Inner Eurasia occurred about 80,000 to 90,000 years ago, which is relatively late in human history compared with Africa, Europe, and southern Asia. Why was it difficult to settle?
The long, cold, arid winters of this region’s steppes (grass covered plains) poised two distinctive problems for human settlers. The first was hot to keep warm. Humans may have used fire even a million years ago. Presumably their ability to scavenge animal carcasses meant that they could use skins or furs for warmth. However, there are no signs of hearths before about 200,000 years ago. This suggests that humans used fire opportunistically and had not yet domesticated it enough to survive the harsh winters of Ice Age InnerEurasia.
The second, even trickier problem was getting food during the long winters. It was not that Inner Eurasia lacked sources of food. The problem was that the food was of the wrong kind, and it was not always available. Humans could not exploit the abundant grasses of the steppes, and most of the edible plants died off in winter. So, for long periods of each year, it was necessary to rely mainly on meat. However, hunting is a more difficult, dangerous, and unreliable way of life than gathering. Animals, unlike plants, can evade predators and may even fight back. Hunters must also cover more ground than gatherers.
...