2014年4月12日第二篇托福阅读真题+题目+答案：Water Management in Early Agriculture

4月12日的托福阅读真题分别为：Plant and Animal Life of the Pacific Islands、Water Management in Early Agriculture、Surface Fluids on Venus and Earth。一起来看看你错了几题。

2014年4月12日第二篇托福阅读真题+题目+答案：Water Management in Early Agriculture

As the first cities formed in Mesopotamia in the Middle East, probably around 3000 B.C., it became necessarily to provide food for larger populations, and thus to find ways of increasing agricultural production. This, in turn, led to the problem of obtaining sufficient water.

Irrigation must have started on a small scale with rather simple constructions, but as its value became apparent, more effort was invested in new construction to divert more water into the canals and to extend the canal system to reach greater areas of potential farmland. Because of changing water levels and clogging by waterborne particles, canals and their intakes required additional labor to maintain, besides the normal labor required to guide water from field to field. Beyond this,some personnel had to be devoted to making decisions about the allocation of available water among the users and ensuring that these directions were carried out. With irrigation water also came potential problems, the most obvious being the susceptibility of low-lying farmlands to disastrous flooding and the longer-term problem of salinization (elevated levels of salt in the soil). To combat flooding from rivers, people from early historic times until today have constructed protective levees (raised barriers of earth) between the river and the settlement or fields to be protected. This, of course, is effective up to a certain level of flooding but changes the basic water patterns of the area and can multiply the damage when the flood level exceeds the height of the levee.

1. All of the following are mentioned in paragraph 2 as operations involved in the Mesopotamian irrigation system EXCEPT

A.determining how much irrigation water should be distributed to various farmers

B.widening existing canals so they could hold more water

C.removing undesirable materials from the intakes of irrigation canals

D.building new canals so irrigation water could be transported to distant areas

答案：1.B

2. According to paragraph 2, protective levees can have which of the following disadvantages?

A.They can greatly increase the destruction caused by floodwaters when floodwaters are higher than the levee.

B.They can fail even when the flood level remains below the height of the levee.

C.They can lead over time to a serious salinization problem.

D.They can cause damaging floods to occur more frequently by changing basic water patterns.

答案：2.A

3. Paragraph 2 suggests that irrigation increased the likelihood of destructive floods because

A.irrigated fields were often in locations that tended to flood naturally

B.the canal intakes for irrigation water often did not work

C.most irrigation canals were too narrow and thus overflowed

D.levees built to protect irrigation systems required maintenance

答案：3.A

4. The word “potential” in the passage is closet in meaning to

A.serious

B.basic

C.new

D.possible

答案：4.D

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