Geography GK Questions with Answers – Page 36

Honshu is the largest and most populous of the four main islands of the Japanese archipelago and carries Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto and Mount Fuji, so the political and industrial heart of Japan lies on it.

Borneo, the third largest island in the world, is divided between the Indonesian provinces of Kalimantan in the south, the Malaysian states of Sabah and Sarawak in the north, and the small sultanate of Brunei on the northern coast, and it is the only large island shared by three countries.

The Mozambique Channel is the arm of the Indian Ocean that lies between Madagascar and the coast of Mozambique on the African mainland, and Madagascar itself is a continental island that broke away from Africa and later from India, which is why its wildlife is so distinctive.

The Ten Degree Channel runs along the tenth parallel of north latitude across the Bay of Bengal and separates the Andaman group in the north from the Nicobar group in the south, which is why the Union Territory is named for both groups.

Barren Island in the Andaman group of the Bay of Bengal carries the only active volcano in India and indeed in South Asia, part of the volcanic arc produced where the Indian plate dips beneath the Burma plate, and it has erupted several times in recent decades.

Majuli lies in the Brahmaputra in Assam, formed by silt deposited by the river and its tributaries, is a seat of the Vaishnava satras founded in the tradition of Srimanta Sankardeva, and has been constituted a district of Assam, the first river island district in the country.

Indonesia is a chain of more than seventeen thousand islands stretching along the equator between the Indian and Pacific Oceans, with Java, Sumatra, Sulawesi and the Indonesian halves of Borneo and New Guinea as its principal members, and it is the largest archipelago in the world.

Greenland, an autonomous territory of Denmark lying between the North Atlantic and the Arctic Ocean, is the largest island on earth, most of it covered by an ice sheet, and it is a continental island separated from the North American landmass.

Kolleru is a large shallow freshwater lake lying between the deltas of the Krishna and the Godavari, fed by the Budameru and Tammileru streams; it is a natural flood balancing reservoir for the two deltas and an important wintering ground for pelicans and other water birds.

It lies in the Kashmir valley in Jammu and Kashmir, is fed by the Jhelum and occupies a tectonic depression, which makes it the largest freshwater lake of India.

The Iguazu river falls in a horseshoe of hundreds of separate cascades just above its junction with the Parana, and the two countries have national parks on either side of the fall.

It lies in the Jordan rift valley between Israel and Jordan, more than four hundred metres below sea level, and its extreme salinity, caused by heavy evaporation with no outlet, lets a swimmer float easily.

The White Nile leaves Lake Victoria at Jinja in Uganda and flows north through Lake Kyoga and Lake Albert to meet the Blue Nile at Khartoum, where the Nile proper begins.

Lake Titicaca lies on the Altiplano of the Andes at about 3,810 metres above sea level and carries regular boat traffic, which is why it is called the highest navigable lake in the world.

Of the five lakes remembered by the word HOMES, Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie and Superior, only Michigan lies wholly in the United States; the international boundary with Canada runs through the other four.

The Niagara river carries the water of Lake Erie to Lake Ontario, and on the way it crosses the Niagara escarpment, a band of hard dolomite, which produces the Horseshoe, American and Bridal Veil falls on the border of Canada and the United States.

The falls lie on the border of Zambia and Zimbabwe, where the Zambezi drops into a basalt gorge; the local name Mosi-oa-Tunya means the smoke that thunders, and the missionary explorer David Livingstone named them after Queen Victoria in 1855.

Angel Falls, called Salto Angel in Spanish, drops about 979 metres from the Auyan Tepui, one of the flat topped table mountains of the Guiana highlands, and is fed by the Churun river, a tributary of the Caroni.

It is a landlocked salt lake bordered by Russia, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Iran and Azerbaijan, the remnant of the ancient Tethys sea, and is called a sea only by custom.

It lies in a rift valley in southern Siberia, reaches a depth of about 1,642 metres and holds more fresh water by volume than any other lake, roughly a fifth of the unfrozen surface fresh water of the earth.