Geography GK Questions with Answers – Page 74

The Salem Steel Plant lies in Salem district of Tamil Nadu, so this is the only correctly matched pair. It is a SAIL unit set up in 1981 and is known for stainless steel cold-rolled coils and sheets rather than ordinary construction steel.

The Kawas Thermal Power Station stands at Kawas near Hazira in the Surat district of Gujarat, on the bank of the Tapi.

Loess is a deposit of fine silt and dust carried by the wind and dropped far from where it was picked up, so it is the classic wind made or aeolian soil.

Serchhip district of Mizoram recorded the highest literacy rate of any district in India in the Census of 2011, at almost 98 per cent.

Palm, coconut, keora and agar are the trees named for India's mangrove or tidal forests, which grow where the land meets the sea in deltas, estuaries and creeks.

Laterite soil is rich in oxides of iron and aluminium, and the iron oxide gives it its red brick colour.

The Census of 2011 puts the average annual exponential growth rate of India's population for the decade 2001 to 2011 at 1.64 per cent.

These are called monsoon forests because they grow where rainfall comes with the monsoon, between about 70 and 200 centimetres a year, and the trees shed their leaves for six to eight weeks in the dry season to save water.

Cashew grows best on red laterite soil, which is coarse, well drained and slightly acidic, exactly what the crop needs.

Marble is a metamorphic rock, formed when limestone is changed deep inside the earth by great heat and pressure; the Taj Mahal is built of it.

Coniferous forests grow in the cold northern belt of Asia, Europe and North America and are made of softwood evergreen trees such as pine, fir and spruce, whose light wood is used for paper and furniture.

In the Census of 2011 the male literacy rate was 82.14 per cent and the female literacy rate was 65.46 per cent, so the gap between them was 16.68 percentage points.

Maharashtra has by far the largest number of large dams in India, more than two thousand of the roughly 5,300 listed in the National Register of Large Dams, which is close to half the country's total.

The Loo is the strong, dry and very hot wind that blows over the plains of north and north-west India during the day in May and June.

Doab, from the Persian words for two and water, is the name for the tract of land between two rivers.

The Purvanchal or Eastern Hills are the southward continuation of the Himalayas beyond the eastern bend of the Brahmaputra, and they are made up of the Patkai Bum, the Naga Hills, the Manipur Hills and the Mizo or Lushai Hills.

Majuli lies in the Brahmaputra in Assam and is counted the largest river island in the world. The Brahmaputra carries an enormous load of silt from a young, rapidly eroding basin, and because its channel is braided and shifts often, it has built large islands and sandbars called chars.

The Pir Panjal is the longest and most important range of the Lesser or Himachal Himalaya, running from the Jhelum through Jammu and Kashmir towards Himachal Pradesh and separating the Kashmir valley from the Jammu plains.

The Himalayas were raised when the northward-moving Indian plate collided with the Eurasian plate and the sediments of the shallow Tethys Sea between them were compressed into great folds and thrust upward.

Kanchenjunga rises to 8,586 metres on the Sikkim-Nepal border and is the highest peak in India's undisputed territory, as well as the third highest in the world after Everest and K2.