Geography Mixed Quiz: Set 43

The correct answer is B, Uttarakhand. Gairsain, in the Chamoli district of the Garhwal hills, was declared the summer capital of Uttarakhand, a long-standing demand of the hill districts, which held that a capital in the plains at Dehradun left them neglected. Option A is wrong because the second capital of Himachal Pradesh is Dharamshala, and it is a winter capital, not a summer one. Option C is wrong because Sikkim has only one capital, Gangtok. Option D is wrong because Arunachal Pradesh is governed from Itanagar alone. Note the pattern in such questions: a hill State places its second capital higher up for the summer, while a State whose main capital is already in the hills, such as Himachal Pradesh, moves down for the winter.

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 B, Europe, Antarctica, South America, North America. Smallest to largest, Europe covers about 10.2 million square kilometres, Antarctica about 14 million, South America about 17.8 million and North America about 24.7 million. The full order of the seven continents from largest to smallest is Asia, Africa, North America, South America, Antarctica, Europe and Australia, and Asia alone takes up about thirty per cent of the land surface. Europe is often called a peninsula of the Eurasian landmass because it is not separated from Asia by sea, while Antarctica, though larger than Europe, is almost wholly covered by ice and has no permanent population. A is wrong because it places Antarctica first, though it is bigger than Europe. C is wrong because it makes Antarctica the largest of the four. D is wrong because South America is bigger than both Europe and Antarctica. Exam tip: learn one chain, Asia, Africa, North America, South America, Antarctica, Europe, Australia.

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 B, the Nile. At a little over 6,600 kilometres it is the river that standard references and examination papers treat as the longest, flowing north through Sudan and Egypt into the Mediterranean Sea from two branches, the White Nile of the Lake Victoria region and the Blue Nile of Lake Tana in Ethiopia. Option A, the Amazon, is second in length but first in volume and in basin area, and the distinction between longest and largest is exactly what the question is testing. Option C, the Yangtze, is the longest river of Asia and the third longest in the world, and the Three Gorges Dam stands on it. Option D, the Mississippi, with the Missouri forms the longest system of North America and drains into the Gulf of Mexico, but it is well short of the Nile. Read the question with care, because a paper asking for the largest river expects the Amazon instead.

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, soil erosion. Bad lands are stretches of land cut into a close network of deep gullies and sharp ridges, so dissected that cultivation becomes impossible, and they are produced when running water removes the topsoil through sheet wash that concentrates first into rills and then into gullies. The Chambal ravines of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh are the Indian textbook example. Option A, scanty rainfall, is wrong because bad lands need intense, concentrated runoff on loose material, and they occur in areas of heavy seasonal downpours rather than in the driest tracts. Option C, excessive forest cover, is the opposite of the truth: a thick cover of roots and leaf litter binds soil and breaks the force of raindrops, so forests prevent gullying. Option D, open defecation, is a sanitation problem with no role in shaping gullies. Note that the same question is sometimes asked with the word ravine instead of bad land; the answer stays the same.

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 D, Nagaland. India touches China through Ladakh, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh, and Nagaland is not on that boundary; its international border is with Myanmar. Option A is wrong because Sikkim touches China along the Nathu La and Jelep La passes in the Chumbi valley region. Option B is wrong because Himachal Pradesh touches Tibet along the Spiti and Kinnaur districts, with the Shipki La pass. Option C is wrong because Arunachal Pradesh has the longest stretch of this boundary, along the McMahon Line. Candidates confuse Nagaland with Sikkim in such lists because both are small and mountainous, so fix each with its neighbour: Sikkim with China, Bhutan and Nepal, and Nagaland with Myanmar alone. Ladakh, which carries the longest stretch of this boundary in the western sector, is a Union territory and not a State, so a question that asks only about States leaves it out.

The correct answer is C, Panthalassa. In the continental drift theory that Alfred Wegener put forward in 1912, the single land mass was Pangaea and the single mega ocean around it was Panthalassa, a Greek name meaning all sea. Wegener held that Pangaea began to break up about 200 million years ago, first into Laurasia in the north and Gondwanaland in the south, with the Tethys Sea between them, and the pieces then drifted to their present places. He offered the jigsaw fit of the Atlantic coasts and matching rocks and fossils as proof, but the forces he named, the pole fleeing force and the tidal force, were too weak to convince geologists, and plate tectonics later replaced the theory. A is wrong because Pigmalion is not a geological name at all. B is wrong because Panama is an isthmus, and a country, joining North and South America. D is wrong because Pangaea was the land mass, not the ocean. Exam tip: fix the pair - Pangaea the super continent, Panthalassa the super ocean.

The correct answer is B, Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, where the two great branches of the Nile join and flow on as a single river towards Egypt. The White Nile comes from the Lake Victoria region of East Africa and carries a steady flow; the Blue Nile rises at Lake Tana in the Ethiopian highlands and brings the summer flood and most of the silt. Option A, Cairo, lies far downstream in Egypt, close to where the Nile opens into its delta. Option C, Addis Ababa, is the capital of Ethiopia and stands on no part of the Nile channel, although the Blue Nile rises in that country. Option D, Aswan, is the Egyptian town known for the Aswan High Dam and Lake Nasser behind it, again downstream of the confluence. The pairing to carry into the hall is Lake Tana with the Blue Nile and Khartoum with the confluence.

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 D, overgrazing. Overgrazing strips the protective cover of grass, loosens the surface with hooves and leaves bare soil exposed to rain and wind, so it is one of the leading causes of soil erosion in dry India, never a remedy. Option A, intercropping, grows two or more crops together in alternate rows so that the ground is never left bare, which cuts the force of falling rain and is a recognised conservation practice. Option B, shelter belts, are rows of trees planted across the prevailing wind, used in Rajasthan and in the coastal tracts to slow the wind and stop deflation of sandy soil. Option C, a rock dam, is a low barrier of rocks built across a gully so that water slows, drops its silt and stops cutting the channel deeper. Questions of this kind usually list three genuine measures and one cause of degradation, so read the stem for the word NOT.

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 C, the Andes. The range runs about 7,000 kilometres down the western edge of South America through Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile and Argentina, and it carries Aconcagua, the highest peak outside Asia. Option A, the Himalaya, is the highest range in the world and holds Mount Everest, but it is far shorter, stretching roughly 2,400 kilometres from the Indus to the Brahmaputra. Option B, the Rockies, runs from Canada to the south-western United States and is also shorter than the Andes. Option D, the Great Dividing Range, follows the eastern side of Australia and holds Mount Kosciuszko, the highest point of the Australian mainland. Note the word continental in the question: if ranges on the sea floor are allowed, the mid-oceanic ridge is many times longer than the Andes and becomes the right answer.

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 B, II, IV, III and I. Water erosion passes through stages, and the soil lost grows at every stage. Splash erosion, numbered II, is the first and mildest: raindrops strike bare soil and knock single particles a few centimetres away. Sheet erosion, numbered IV, follows when the dislodged material is carried off as a thin film of water over the whole surface. Rill erosion, numbered III, begins when that flow gathers into small channels a few centimetres deep that a plough can still erase. Gully erosion, numbered I, is the final and most destructive stage, in which the rills deepen into permanent ravines and the field goes out of use. So the increasing order is splash, sheet, rill and gully, which is option B. Option A and option C both place gully or rill ahead of splash, and option D wrongly puts rill before sheet, so none of them matches the recognised sequence.

The correct answer is C, Argentina. Aconcagua stands in the Andes in the Mendoza region of western Argentina, close to the Chilean border, and at about 6,961 metres it is the highest summit of both the Americas and of the southern hemisphere, and so the highest anywhere outside Asia. Option A, Chile, holds the long western slope of the Andes and many high volcanoes such as Ojos del Salado, which is the highest volcano on earth, but Aconcagua itself lies on the Argentine side of the frontier. Option B, Peru, has the Cordillera Blanca with Huascaran, high but lower than Aconcagua. Option D, Bolivia, holds the Altiplano and peaks such as Nevado Sajama, again lower. Keep the set of continental high points together: Everest for Asia, Aconcagua for South America, Denali for North America, Kilimanjaro for Africa, Elbrus for Europe and Vinson Massif for Antarctica.

The correct answer is B, physical weathering. Exfoliation is caused by repeated heating and cooling of the outer layer of a rock and by the release of pressure when overlying material is removed; the surface expands and contracts more than the interior and splits away as curved sheets. No change in the chemical composition of the rock takes place, and nothing is transported, so the process is mechanical weathering in place. Option A, chemical weathering, would require reactions such as carbonation, hydrolysis or oxidation that alter the minerals themselves, as in the solution of limestone. Option C, glacial erosion, involves moving ice that plucks and abrades rock, producing cirques and U-shaped valleys, not onion-skin shells. Option D, wind deposition, builds dunes and loess sheets and is a depositional process, the opposite of breaking rock down. Remember the rule that decides most questions in this chapter: weathering breaks rock where it stands, erosion carries the pieces away.

The correct answer is B, the Sahara, which stretches across North Africa through about eleven countries from the Atlantic coast to the Red Sea and is the largest hot desert on earth. Option A, the Gobi, lying in Mongolia and northern China, is the largest desert of Asia but a cold desert, with freezing winters, so it fails the word hot in the question. Option C, the Kalahari, in Botswana, Namibia and South Africa, is hot but much smaller than the Sahara and is in large part a sandy savanna that supports grass and thorn. Option D, the Great Victoria Desert, is the largest desert of Australia and again far smaller. Remember that if the question drops the word hot and asks only for the largest desert, the answer becomes the Antarctic Desert, because geographers define a desert by low precipitation and not by temperature.