Geography Previous Year Questions (PYQ) with Answers – Page 49

Himachal Pradesh lies west of the Nepal border, so it touches China in the north but never Nepal. Five Indian states share a boundary with Nepal - Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal and Sikkim - and the border runs for about 1,751 kilometres.

The halocline is the layer in a vertical section of the ocean in which salinity changes sharply with depth; the name comes from the Greek halos, meaning salt.

The Himalayas are the youngest mountains in India. They are fold mountains, thrown up where the Indian plate pushed into the Eurasian plate and crumpled the sediments of the old Tethys Sea between them.

Salinity rises where water leaves as vapour and falls where fresh water is added.

The pink bollworm is the most damaging pest of the cotton plant.

Wheat is the leading rabi crop of India. It is sown in October and November, needs a cool season of about fifty to sixty centimetres of rainfall for growth and bright sunshine at the time of ripening, and is harvested in March and April.

Tropical deciduous forest is called monsoon forest because it is the natural vegetation of the monsoon climate, growing where rainfall lies between 70 and 200 centimetres and where a marked dry season follows the rains.

Red sanders, or red sandalwood, is a tree of the dry deciduous forest and grows almost entirely in the Seshachalam and Palakonda hills of the Eastern Ghats in Andhra Pradesh, where it is prized for its dark red heartwood; it is not a thorn forest species.

India's Standard Meridian, 82°30′E, crosses five states on its way south. Indian Standard Time is fixed by the local time of this meridian, which passes close to Mirzapur in Uttar Pradesh, so IST is 5 hours 30 minutes ahead of Greenwich Mean Time.

Rajasthan supplies most of India's gypsum and almost all of its silver ore.

Shifting agriculture is called jhoom or jhum cultivation in India, especially in the north eastern hills. In this method a patch of forest is cleared and burnt, and the ash left behind manures the soil.

The Kolar Gold Fields lie in the Kolar district of Karnataka, on the Dharwar rocks of the peninsular plateau. Kolar was for a long time India's main source of gold and one of the deepest mines in the world, going down about three kilometres.

Formed by the Varahi river in the Shivamogga district of Karnataka, it is counted as the highest waterfall in India, falling in a long series of steps through rocky terrain; because it lies within the catchment of the Mani dam, its full flow is seen mainly in the monsoon.

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

The Bansagar Dam stands on the Sone river in the Shahdol region of Madhya Pradesh. Bansagar is a joint project of Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, the three states through which the Sone flows, and it serves both irrigation and power.

The westerlies blow from the subtropical high pressure belt towards the subpolar low, which makes them south-westerly in the northern hemisphere and north-westerly in the southern.

The Orange River is the longest river of South Africa, about 2,200 km long. It rises in the Drakensberg mountains of Lesotho, flows west across South Africa and falls into the Atlantic Ocean at Alexander Bay.

The Panama Canal cuts across the narrow Isthmus of Panama in Central America and joins the Atlantic Ocean, through the Caribbean Sea, with the Pacific Ocean.

Indira Point, the southernmost point of India, lies at the southern tip of Great Nicobar Island in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

Guru Shikhar, about 1,722 m high on Mount Abu in the Sirohi district of Rajasthan, is the highest peak of the Aravalli Range.