Geography Mixed Quiz: Set 41

The correct answer is B, Leh. Leh, in the cold desert of Ladakh, lies above 3,500 metres in the Himalayas, and its winter temperature falls far below freezing, lower than anywhere else in the list.

Height is the main reason. Air grows thinner and colder as one climbs, by roughly one degree Celsius for every 165 metres, and the thin dry air of Ladakh also loses heat quickly at night.

Option A, Jaisalmer, lies in the hot Thar Desert of Rajasthan and is known for extreme summer heat rather than cold. Option C, Munnar, is a hill station in Kerala whose climate stays mild through the year because it is near the equator and much lower. Option D, Bundelkhand, is a plateau region of central India with a hot semi-arid climate.

Exam tip: altitude lowers temperature; Dras and Leh in Ladakh are India's coldest inhabited places.

The correct answer is D, Minicoy. Minicoy is the southernmost island of the Lakshadweep group, and it lies well apart from the rest of the archipelago.

Lakshadweep is a union territory of 36 islands, of which about ten are inhabited, with Kavaratti as its capital. The group falls into three parts: the Amindivi islands in the north, the Laccadive islands in the middle and Minicoy in the south. Minicoy is cut off from the other islands by the Nine Degree Channel and from the Maldives by the Eight Degree Channel. Its people speak Mahl, written in the Thaana script, which sets the island apart from the Malayalam speaking islands to its north.

A is wrong: Bitra is the smallest inhabited island and lies in the north of the group. B is wrong: Kavaratti is the capital and sits in the middle of the chain. C is wrong: Amini is one of the northern Amindivi islands.

Exam tip: Minicoy is the southernmost island; the Nine Degree Channel separates it from the other Lakshadweep islands and the Eight Degree Channel separates it from the Maldives.

The correct answer is B, Himachal Pradesh. Shimla is the capital of Himachal Pradesh, and Dharamshala in the Kangra valley was declared its second or winter capital, where a session of the State assembly is held. Option A is wrong because Uttarakhand works from Dehradun and has declared Gairsain, in the Chamoli district, its summer capital. Option C is wrong because the Union territory of Jammu and Kashmir has Srinagar as its summer capital and Jammu as its winter capital, a pair that candidates often transfer wrongly to Himachal Pradesh. Option D is wrong because Sikkim has a single capital, Gangtok. Keep the four hill arrangements separate: Shimla with Dharamshala, Dehradun with Gairsain, Srinagar with Jammu, and Gangtok alone. Himachal Pradesh itself was made a full State in 1971, and its assembly meeting at Dharamshala is meant to serve the Kangra and Chamba side of the State.

The correct answer is B, Black. On Survey of India topographical sheets, railway lines, telegraph and telephone lines, settlement names and boundaries are printed in black, so black is the colour of such man-made linear features.

These sheets follow a fixed colour code, which lets a reader tell features apart at a glance: metalled roads and grid lines appear in red, contours in brown, rivers, canals and tanks in blue, open scrub, grass and cultivated land in yellow, and woodland in green.

Option A, yellow, stands for cultivated land and open fields, not railways. Option C, blue, is kept for water features. Option D, red, is used for roads, grid lines and some settlement symbols.

Exam tip: black for railways and telephone lines, blue for water, green for forest, brown for contours, yellow for cultivated land.

The correct answer is B, Mariana Trench. The Mariana Trench lies in the western Pacific Ocean, east of the Mariana Islands, and its southern end holds the Challenger Deep, close to eleven thousand metres below sea level, named after the British survey ship that sounded it in the nineteenth century. Option A is wrong because the Puerto Rico Trench is the deepest part of the Atlantic Ocean, not of the world. Option C is wrong because the Sunda Trench, also called the Java Trench, off the Indonesian islands, is the deepest part of the Indian Ocean. Option D is wrong because the Tonga Trench, although among the deepest in the Pacific, is shallower than the Mariana Trench. The reliable pairing for the examination hall is Pacific with Mariana, Atlantic with Puerto Rico and Indian with Sunda.

The correct answer is A, Endogenic Forces. Mountains are built by endogenic forces, the forces that act from inside the earth and raise, bend or break the crust. They draw their energy from the earth’s internal heat and from the movement of the plates. Slow or diastrophic movements fold and lift rock over millions of years and give rise to fold mountains such as the Himalayas, the Alps and the Andes, while sudden movements appear as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, which build volcanic mountains. Endogenic forces are therefore called constructive, because they create relief on the surface. B is wrong because exogenic forces such as running water, wind, waves and glaciers act on the surface and wear mountains down instead of raising them. C is wrong because gravity only helps loose material move downhill, as in landslides. D is wrong because the earth’s magnetic field records plate movement but does not lift land. Exam tip: endogenic forces build through diastrophism and volcanism, exogenic forces destroy through weathering and erosion.

The correct answer is A, 40 to 70 degrees. The cold snow-forest climate, group D in Koeppen's scheme, lies in the continental interiors of the northern hemisphere between about 40 and 70 degrees north, across northern Europe, Siberia, Canada and Alaska. It has no counterpart in the southern hemisphere, because there is no large landmass in those latitudes there. Winters are long and severe with the coldest month below minus 3 degrees Celsius, summers are short and mild, and the natural cover is the coniferous taiga of pine, fir and spruce. Its two divisions are Df, moist through the year, and Dw, with a dry winter. B is wrong because 30 to 50 degrees is the warm temperate C belt of Mediterranean and China type climates. C is wrong because latitude cannot exceed 90 degrees. D is wrong because 15 to 20 degrees lies in the tropics. Exam tip: group D cannot occur in the southern hemisphere.

The correct answer is D, Uruguay. The Tropic of Capricorn runs at about 23.5 degrees south and misses Uruguay, which lies further south between roughly 30 and 35 degrees. In South America the line crosses Chile, Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil; going east it passes through Namibia, Botswana, South Africa, Mozambique, Madagascar and Australia, in all ten countries. It marks the farthest point south at which the Sun is overhead, which happens on 22 December, the summer solstice of the southern hemisphere. Option A is wrong because the line crosses northern Chile near the Atacama desert. Option B is wrong because it passes through Brazil just north of Sao Paulo, and the city sits almost on it. Option C is wrong because it runs across Paraguay, cutting the country into a northern tropical part and a southern temperate part. Exam tip: the Tropic of Cancer crosses eight states of India, while the Tropic of Capricorn passes through no part of India at all.

The correct answer is B, Asia. Asia supplies more than half of the world's tin, because the great tin belt of South East Asia runs through Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia, and China is the largest single producer.

Tin is obtained mostly from the ore cassiterite, often by dredging and washing alluvial gravels, and it is used in tin plating, solder and bronze. Indonesia's Bangka and Belitung islands and China's Yunnan and Guangxi provinces are the best known fields.

Option A, Europe, has only small production, chiefly from Cornwall in England, which matters historically rather than today. Option C, North Africa, is a region and not a continent, and it has no important tin mines. Option D, Africa as a whole, produces tin in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Nigeria and Rwanda, but far less than Asia.

Exam tip: Asia leads in tin — China, Indonesia and Myanmar; the ore is cassiterite.

The correct answer is B, Young folded mountains. Young fold mountains were raised in the Tertiary period, only a few tens of millions of years ago in geological time, so erosion has had little time to wear them down and many of them are still rising as the plates behind them keep pushing. The Himalayas, the Alps, the Andes and the Rockies belong to this class, and the tallest summits on earth, Mount Everest and K2 among them, stand in the Himalaya and the Karakoram. A is wrong because old fold mountains such as the Aravallis, the Appalachians and the Urals were formed far earlier, and long erosion has reduced them to low rounded hills. C is wrong because residual mountains are only the harder remnants left behind after the surrounding rock was stripped away, so they stay low. D is wrong because block mountains, like the Vosges and the Black Forest, are raised by faulting between rift valleys and never reach such heights. Exam tip: the Himalaya is a young fold range and the highest, while the Aravalli is the oldest fold range in India.

The correct answer is D, 2.4%. India covers about 32.87 lakh square kilometres, which is roughly 2.4 per cent of the world's total land area.

That small share supports about 17 to 18 per cent of the world's people, and this gap between land and population is what the question is really testing. By area India is the seventh largest country in the world, after Russia, Canada, the United States, China, Brazil and Australia. Its mainland runs from about 8 degrees 4 minutes North to 37 degrees 6 minutes North, and from 68 degrees 7 minutes East to 97 degrees 25 minutes East, giving a north to south length of about 3,214 km and an east to west width of about 2,933 km.

A is wrong: 2.8 per cent is higher than India's actual share. B is wrong: 3.9 per cent overstates that share by more than half. C is wrong: 4.2 per cent is nearly double the correct figure.

Exam tip: India has 2.4 per cent of the world's land area and about 17 per cent of its population, and is the seventh largest country.

The correct answer is C, eye. The calm centre of a cyclone is called the eye of the storm, a roughly circular area twenty to fifty kilometres across where the air sinks, the winds are light and the sky can even be clear.

Around the eye stands the eye wall, a ring of tall clouds where the wind is strongest and the rain heaviest, so fierce weather returns soon after the deceptive calm passes over a place. A cyclone forms over warm tropical seas when moist air rises, condenses and releases heat, and it weakens quickly after landfall because its supply of moisture is cut off.

Option A, arm, is not a term used for any part of a cyclone. Option B, heart, is not the scientific name for the centre. Option D, head, is also not a cyclone term.

Exam tip: the eye is calm, the eye wall carries the strongest winds.

The correct answer is A, Fold Mountain. The Himalayas are young fold mountains, formed when the sediments of the Tethys Sea were squeezed and folded as the Indian plate collided with the Eurasian plate.

Because that collision still continues, the range is rising even now and the whole belt stays earthquake prone. The Alps, the Rockies and the Andes belong to the same class, and like them the Himalayas run in parallel ranges — the Himadri, the Himachal and the Shiwaliks.

Option B, plateau mountain, is not a standard category; plateaus such as the Deccan are flat uplands, not folded ranges. Option C, fault-block mountain, forms when land between two faults is lifted or its sides sink, as in the Satpura and Vindhya blocks. Option D, dome mountain, forms when magma pushes the rock above it upward without erupting.

Exam tip: Himalayas, Alps, Andes and Rockies are young fold mountains; Satpura is a block mountain.

The correct answer is A, Irula. The Irula, also written Irular, are one of the main tribal communities of Tamil Nadu and live mostly in the Nilgiri hills and in the districts along the border with Kerala. They speak Irula, a Dravidian tongue close to Tamil, and are known across the country as expert snake and rat catchers; their cooperative society in Chennai supplies the venom from which antivenom is made. They are counted among the particularly vulnerable tribal groups of the state, along with the Toda, Kota and Kurumba of the same hills. Option B is wrong because no tribe of that name is recorded in Tamil Nadu. Option C is wrong because the Garo are a major tribe of Meghalaya in the north east and live in the Garo hills. Option D is wrong because the Khond, written here in a shortened form, are a tribe of Odisha known for hill cultivation. Exam tip: Irula and Toda with Tamil Nadu, Garo and Khasi with Meghalaya, Khond with Odisha.

The correct answer is A, Tube well. Tube wells irrigate the largest share of the net irrigated area of Rajasthan, and groundwater drawn through tube wells and wells together waters the greater part of the state's fields. The reason is the climate: rainfall is low and uncertain over most of the state and perennial rivers are few, so a farmer who wants a second crop has to pump water. This heavy drawing of groundwater has pushed many blocks of Rajasthan into the over-exploited category, which is why drip and sprinkler irrigation are pressed in the state. B is wrong because ponds and tanks serve only small pockets, mostly in the south and south-east. C is wrong because open wells, once the mainstay, now water a much smaller area than tube wells. D is wrong because canals, led by the Indira Gandhi Canal, come second and are limited to the north-west and the Chambal command. Exam tip: in Rajasthan groundwater leads, tube wells first and canals second.

The correct answer is A, B, D and E, that is landslide, tsunami and floods. An earthquake is the shaking of the ground when energy stored along a fault is suddenly released, and that shaking sets off further hazards. On a steep slope the tremor loosens soil and rock and brings down a landslide. Under the sea, a sudden movement of the ocean floor lifts a huge column of water and sends out a tsunami, as in the Indian Ocean in December 2004. Floods follow when the shaking cracks a dam or an embankment, or when a landslide dams a river and the water later bursts through. Option B is wrong because lightning and thundering are weather events born in tall cumulonimbus clouds and have nothing to do with movement inside the earth. Option C is wrong because it keeps only the landslide and leaves out the tsunami. Option D is wrong because it adds floods but still misses the tsunami. Exam tip: earthquake – landslide, tsunami and dam-burst floods; lightning and thunder belong to a thunderstorm.

The correct answer is A, Interiors of India. The interior of the country has the sharpest difference between summer and winter because it lies far from the sea, and this effect is called continentality. Land heats and cools faster than water, so places such as Churu, Jaisalmer and Nagpur can cross 48 degrees Celsius in May and fall close to freezing in January, giving a yearly range of over 20 degrees. B is wrong because the sea breeze keeps coastal cities such as Mumbai and Chennai even through the year, with a range of only a few degrees. C is wrong because hill stations are cool in all seasons, since height, not distance from the sea, decides their temperature. D is wrong because the Andaman and Lakshadweep islands are surrounded by water and have an almost equable maritime climate. Exam tip: continentality raises the annual range of temperature, while the sea reduces it, so Mumbai and Nagpur lie on the same latitude but feel very different.

The correct answer is C, West Bengal. The India and Bangladesh boundary runs through five States, and of these West Bengal has by far the longest stretch, since Bangladesh lies along its southern and eastern sides. Bangladesh is also the country with which India shares its longest land boundary. Option A is wrong because Assam has a comparatively short stretch along its south-western side. Option B is wrong because Tripura, although it is almost surrounded by Bangladesh on three sides, is a small State and its border is shorter than that of West Bengal. Option D is wrong because Meghalaya has a moderate stretch along its southern edge. Note that West Bengal is also the only State touching three countries, Nepal, Bhutan and Bangladesh. The five States along this boundary are worth listing in order from west to east, as West Bengal, Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura and Mizoram, because papers often ask how many States border Bangladesh.

The correct answer is C, Indian Ocean. It takes its name from India, whose peninsula projects into it, and this is the only case of an ocean named after a nation; it is also unusual in being closed in the north by the Asian landmass, which makes its monsoon-driven currents reverse twice a year. Option A is wrong because the Arctic Ocean is named from the Greek word for the bear, through the constellation that marks the north. Option B is wrong because the Southern Ocean is named for its position around Antarctica and was recognised as a separate ocean only in 2000. Option D is wrong because the Atlantic takes its name from Atlas of Greek mythology and from the Atlas Mountains of north-west Africa. Remember that the Indian Ocean is also the warmest of the oceans and the third largest by area.

The correct answer is D, Winter. The north-east trade winds blow over India in the winter season, roughly from October to February.

In winter the sun lies over the southern hemisphere, a high pressure area builds up over the cold land of northern India and central Asia, and the winds blow outward from the land towards the sea. These are the north-east monsoon, or the winter monsoon, and because they come off the land they are dry and bring very little rain to most of the country. Tamil Nadu and the Coromandel coast are the exception: there the winds cross the Bay of Bengal, pick up moisture and give that coast its main rainy season.

A is wrong: autumn, from October to November, is the retreating monsoon season, when the south-west winds withdraw. B is wrong: the monsoon season is dominated by the moist south-west monsoon. C is wrong: summer brings low pressure over the land and the hot dry local wind called the loo.

Exam tip: winter brings the dry north-east trades, which still give Tamil Nadu its rain, while summer brings the wet south-west monsoon.