Geography GK Questions with Answers – Page 76

Granite is an igneous rock, not a sedimentary one. It forms when magma cools slowly deep inside the crust, so its crystals of quartz, feldspar and mica are large enough to see; because it cooled below the surface it is called an intrusive or plutonic rock.

The Kudankulam Nuclear Power Station stands on the coast of the Gulf of Mannar in the Tirunelveli district of Tamil Nadu.

The Tehri Dam stands on the Bhagirathi in the Tehri Garhwal district of Uttarakhand, just below the point where the Bhilangana joins the river.

Tropical dry deciduous forest covers the largest share of India's forest area.

Jog Falls is in the Shivamogga district of Karnataka. The Sharavathi river drops about 253 metres here in four separate streams known as Raja, Rani, Rocket and Roarer, which makes Jog one of the highest plunge waterfalls in India.

Red Sindhi is an indigenous Indian dairy breed of cattle, while the other three are Indian dog breeds.

The Loo is the hot, dry wind of the northern and north-western plains of India. The Loo blows from the west and north-west during the day in May and June, when the land heats up and a low pressure trough forms over north-west India.

Maize is the crop grown both as food and as fodder, needing 21°C to 27°C and old alluvial soil. Maize is a kharif crop sown with the onset of the monsoon, though in Bihar and a few other states it is also raised in the rabi season.

Iron and steel is indeed a heavy industry, but not because of light raw materials. Industries are classified by the weight of the material they handle.

The Wang Chhu flows through western Bhutan and joins the Brahmaputra system in India. The Wang Chhu rises in the Himalayas of Tibet, passes Thimphu and Paro in Bhutan, and enters West Bengal, where it is known as the Raidak.

El Nino is the warming of surface water in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific. In a normal year the trade winds push warm water westwards towards Australia and Indonesia, and cold water rises along the coast of Peru and Ecuador.

Pulicat Lake lies across the boundary of Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, with the larger share in Andhra Pradesh, and is the second largest brackish-water lagoon in India after Chilika.

Kharif crops are the monsoon crops: they are sown with the onset of the south-west monsoon in June and July and harvested in September and October, when the rains withdraw.

Cotton is a kharif crop: it is sown with the first showers of the south-west monsoon in June and July and picked from September onwards, because it needs high temperature, light rain and a long frost-free spell.

Only sedimentary rocks preserve fossils, because they are built up layer by layer from sediment that settles in water or on land.

The continental shelf is the gently sloping submerged edge of a continent, usually taken down to about two hundred metres.

Its southern end holds the Challenger Deep, the deepest surveyed point on earth at roughly eleven kilometres below sea level, deep enough to swallow Mount Everest with water to spare.

Sodium chloride makes up most of it, with magnesium, calcium and potassium salts making up the rest. Salinity varies with evaporation, rainfall, river inflow and the melting or freezing of ice, so the figure is an average rather than a fixed value.

The warm Gulf Stream moving north-east meets the cold Labrador current coming south past Newfoundland. Nutrients carried by the cold water mix with the warmer surface layer, plankton multiplies, and huge shoals of cod once gathered there.

It flows northward along the western coast of southern Africa, carrying cool water from the Southern Ocean towards the equator, and the upwelling along it makes the Namibian coast a rich fishing zone while helping to keep the Namib desert dry.