Geography Mixed Quiz: Set 126

The winter solstice of the Northern Hemisphere falls on about 22 December. On that day the Sun's rays fall vertically on the Tropic of Capricorn, and the North Pole is tilted away from the Sun.

The Hirakud dam was built across the Mahanadi in Sambalpur district of Odisha, and with its earthen dykes on both flanks it is the longest dam in the country.

The 0° latitude is the Equator, the largest circle that can be drawn on the globe, so it is the longest parallel.

Nathu La lies on the Sikkim border and crosses into the Chumbi valley of Tibet; it was an important wool and trade route, was closed after the 1962 conflict and was reopened for border trade in 2006.

Granite is far harder than soapstone, and foliation is a feature of metamorphic rocks, not sedimentary ones, so these two statements are wrong.

The Toda are a small pastoral community of the Nilgiri plateau in Tamil Nadu, known for their barrel-vaulted huts, their sacred buffalo herds and their dairy-centred religion; they are also classed as a Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group.

Pithoragarh lies in the Kumaon Himalaya of Uttarakhand, close to the borders of Nepal and Tibet, in the most earthquake-prone belt of the country.

It expresses magnitude, the energy released at the focus, on a logarithmic scale, so a rise of one whole number means about thirty-two times more energy, and a single earthquake has only one magnitude whatever the distance of the observer.

Statements III and IV describe the ionosphere and the mesosphere correctly, while I and II mix up facts about the troposphere and the ozone layer.

Migration is studied through push factors in the place of origin and pull factors in the place of destination, and all three items listed belong to that study.

The Kutch region of Gujarat is one of the driest parts of India, with low and highly uncertain rainfall, often below 40 cm a year, and failures of the monsoon in many years.

The Strait of Hormuz runs between the Iranian coast and the Musandam peninsula of Oman and is the only sea route out of the Persian Gulf, leading into the Gulf of Oman and from there into the Arabian Sea; that is why it is the world's most sensitive oil chokepoint.

Oyashio, Kuroshio, Alaska and Humboldt are currents of the Pacific Ocean, while Canaries, Labrador and Benguela flow in the Atlantic.

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 Great Indian Desert, or Marusthali, lies to the north-west of the Aravalli hills in western Rajasthan. It is believed that during the Mesozoic era, the age of the dinosaurs some 250 to 66 million years ago, this region lay under the sea.

The Great Rift Valley runs for about six thousand kilometres from the Jordan valley and the Dead Sea, down the Red Sea, through Ethiopia and the lake region of East Africa to Mozambique, and it is the largest rift on the continents, formed where the crust is being pulled apart.

All three projects, Baglihar, Dulhasti and Salal, stand on the Chenab river in Jammu and Kashmir. The Chenab is formed by the Chandra and Bhaga rivers, which meet at Tandi in Himachal Pradesh, and it flows through Jammu and Kashmir into Pakistan.

Loktak Lake lies south of Imphal in Manipur and is the largest freshwater lake in North-East India. Loktak is famous for its phumdis, floating masses of soil, vegetation and decaying organic matter that drift on the water.

Histosols are the soil order made mostly of organic matter, such as peat and muck, rather than of mineral particles.

Sholas are patches of stunted, evergreen montane forest found in the sheltered valleys and folds of the high hills of the southern Western Ghats, above about 1,500 metres.