​Hot-Air Balloons: Multiple Choice Vocabulary Test

Traveling by hot-air balloon may not be as fast as riding a bicycle, but it is certainly more fun. Professional balloonist can (0)      B       to $100 for an evening flight and a glass of champagne. There is never any shortage of customers this exciting and romantic (1)________. The average balloon (2)________ a pilot, a navigator and three or four passengers who stand in an underhanging basket.

The (3)________ from the balloon is breathtaking. However, those who are afraid of (4)________ may find it difficult to get (5)________ to traveling at 3,000 feat.

Because so little water moves through the desert soil to (6)________ nutrients away, desert soils are naturally fertile. Crops are grown on desert lands with water (7)________ by irrigation from rivers or wells. Such transformations of deserts are not without problems. Evaporation of the irrigation water (8)________ in the accumulation of salt on the surface soil, eventually rendering it useless for further crop (9)________. By tapping reservoirs of fossil water deep beneath the desert, humans are, in effect, mining water. Once this water is gone, it is (10)________. Burning and overgrazing of semiarid lands on the periphery of deserts can irreversibly damage the plants that concentrate moisture and hold the soil (11)________, thus enabling deserts to encroach on arable land. This encroachment, a serious world problem, is called desertification. A 1984 report of a desertification study made for the United Nations stated that 35 percent of the earth's land surface was at least (12)________ by such processes.