Geography GK Questions with Answers – Page 43

Saline soils are found in dry regions and in waterlogged or swampy areas, but they are poor in nitrogen, not rich in it.

The Peninsular Block is an old, stable landmass with worn-down residual hills and a western edge that sank along faults, but its rivers flow in broad, shallow valleys.

The Levant is the land on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea in West Asia. The word comes from the French 'lever', to rise, meaning the land where the sun rises, as seen from Europe.

The islands have a warm, humid tropical maritime climate and get rain from both monsoons, but December to May is their drier part of the year.

Nanda Devi belongs to the Kumaon Himalaya, but Namcha Barwa and Nokrek are wrongly placed. Nanda Devi (7,816 m) is the highest peak lying wholly within India and the highest in Uttarakhand.

Pandharpur stands on the Chandrabhaga and Tiruchirappalli on the Cauvery, but Hampi lies on the Tungabhadra, not the Malaprabha. Pandharpur in Solapur district of Maharashtra is the seat of Lord Vitthal (Vithoba) and the goal of the Warkari pilgrimage.

The Pennar river cut the Gandikota gorge through the Erramala hills in the Kadapa district of Andhra Pradesh. Gandikota is often called the Grand Canyon of India.

Soil scientists list parent material, topography (relief), climate, biological activity and time as the factors that form soil; where people live is not one of them.

At Rudraprayag in Uttarakhand the Mandakini, which flows down from near Kedarnath, joins the Alaknanda. Rudraprayag is one of the Panch Prayag, the five holy confluences of the Alaknanda on its way to forming the Ganga.

This is the order of the layers of the atmosphere from the ground upwards, with the exosphere above them all.

The western coastal plain is narrow, steep and submergent, so the rivers of the Western Ghats reach the sea through estuaries rather than deltas, and the drowned valleys give deep natural harbours such as Mumbai, Marmagao, New Mangalore and Kochi, besides the Kerala backwaters called kayals.

In this belt the coastal State is not sovereign, but it may exercise the control needed to prevent and punish the infringement of its customs, fiscal, immigration and sanitary laws within its territory or territorial sea.

Indira Point at the southern tip of Great Nicobar is the southernmost point of the territory of India and lies close to the equator; it was earlier called Pygmalion Point and Parsons Point, and its lighthouse subsided during the earthquake and tsunami of December 2004.

Barren Island lies in the Andaman Sea to the east of Middle Andaman and is the only confirmed active volcano in India; Narcondam, also in the Andaman group, is treated as dormant.

Chilika is a shallow lagoon on the Utkal coast, cut off from the Bay of Bengal by a long sand bar and connected to it by a narrow mouth, which is why its water is brackish; it is the largest lagoon of the country, a Ramsar site and the winter…

The Ten Degree Channel runs roughly along the parallel of ten degrees north and separates Little Andaman in the south of the Andaman group from Car Nicobar in the north of the Nicobar group.

Within this zone the coastal State has sovereign rights for exploring, exploiting, conserving and managing the living and non-living resources of the water, the seabed and the subsoil, and exclusive jurisdiction over artificial islands, marine scientific research and the protection of the marine environment.

Under the Maritime Zones Act of 1976 the territorial waters extend to twelve nautical miles from the baseline, and within them India has sovereignty over the water, the seabed, the subsoil and the air space, subject only to the right of innocent passage of foreign ships.

Its coast runs along the Gulf of Kachchh and the Gulf of Khambhat and around the Kathiawar peninsula, which gives it a far longer shoreline than any other State, and it is followed by Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu.

The figure usually quoted is 7,516.6 kilometres, which counts the coast of the mainland together with that of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and Lakshadweep.