山西高考英语阅读理解专项训练.docxVIP

阅读理解 No rainforest is exactly the same—yet most rainforests are now in the small land area 23.26 degrees north and 23.26 degrees south of the Equator (赤道), between the Tropic of Capricorn and the Tropic of Cancer. You can find tropical (热带的) rainforests in South America and Indonesia. Other rainforests grow well further from the Equator, in Thailand and Sri Lanka. Despite covering a relatively small area, rainforests have a big role to play in supporting the world. Tropical rainforests are home to a rich variety of plants, food, birds and animals. Can you believe that a single bush in the Amazon may have more species of ants than the whole of Britain? Four hundred and eighty varieties of trees may be found in just one hectare of rainforest. Rainforests are the lungs of the planet—storing huge quantities of CO2 and producing a large amount of the world’s oxygen. Rainforests have their own perfect system for ensuring their own survival. Amazingly, the trees grow in such a way that their leaves and branches, although close together, never actually touch those of another tree. Scientists think this is a deliberate (故意的) way to prevent the spread of any tree diseases and make life more difficult for leaf-eating insects such as caterpillars. To survive in the forest, animals must climb, jump or fly. The ground floor of the forest is not all tangled (缠结的) leaves and bushes, as in films, but is actually fairly clear. It is where leaves are destroyed slowly and turned into food for the trees and other forest life. Worryingly, rainforests around the world are disappearing at an alarming rate, thanks to deforestation, river pollution and soil erosion (流失) as land is being lost for agriculture and trees are cut down for wood. A few thousand years ago, tropical rainforests covered as much as 12 per cent of the land surface on Earth, but today this has fallen to less than 7 per cent. We can only hope that the world governments work together to preserve the rainforests—beautiful a