绵阳市2015高考英语阅读理解一轮学生自选练习（8）及答案
【山东省实验中学2014高考英语一模试】阅读理解
Water runs downhill from mountaintops to streams to rivers to oceans. But downhill isn’t the only way that water moves .A new study measures how water travels from country to country for human consumption. This flow isn’t the type we usually think about .These scientists looked at the water used to grow and make the products which get shipped from nation to nation as imports or exports. They call this a flow of“virtual water（虚拟水）”.
We typically think about water as the liquid that flows from a tap. However,92％of the water used by people goes into growing crops，according to water researcher Arjen Hoekstra. He recently studied the hidden travels of virtual water used in products made from things like crops and meats .These products are shipped around the world.
For example．consider a sugary soft drink. Hoekstra estimated that to produce one half-liter of the drink requires between 170 and 310litersofthewater—about 95％—is used to grow and process the ingredients(原料).Another 4％goes into the packaging and labeling. In Hoekstra’s calculation, when one country produces a half-liter of soda and sells it abroad，it exports as much virtual water as would fill a large refrigerator．
According to Hoekstra’s new report，dry countries like Israel and Kuwait，both in the Middle East,get the
