Geography Mixed Quiz: Set 49

The correct answer is C, Silica. Silica, or silicon dioxide, is one of the chief mineral constituents of the continental crust of the earth.

The continental crust is made largely of granitic rock, which geologists call sial because silica and alumina dominate it. By weight, oxygen makes up about 46 per cent of the crust and silicon about 28 per cent, so silicate minerals such as quartz and feldspar form the bulk of continental rock. The oceanic crust below the seas is basaltic and richer in magnesium, which is why it is called sima and is denser than the continental crust.

Option A, bronze, is an alloy of copper and tin made by humans, not a mineral. Option B, copper, occurs only in small ore deposits. Option D, gypsum, is a sedimentary mineral used in cement and plaster of Paris, present in very small amounts.

Exam tip: continental crust is sial, silica and alumina; oceanic crust is sima, silica and magnesium.

The correct answer is D, Polar type. Koeppen grouped climates by temperature and rainfall and gave each group a capital letter, and E stands for the polar group, where the mean temperature of the warmest month stays below 10 degrees Celsius. In India this type is met only in the high Himalaya, in Ladakh and the upper reaches of Jammu and Kashmir, where snow lies for much of the year and the vegetation is tundra-like. Option A is wrong because tropical savannah is Aw in the scheme and covers most of the peninsular interior. Option B is wrong because the hot desert of western Rajasthan is marked BWhw. Option C is wrong because monsoon with a dry summer is As, the climate of the Coromandel coast of Tamil Nadu, which gets most of its rain from the retreating monsoon. Exam tip: Koeppen's first letters are A tropical, B dry, C warm temperate, D cold snow forest and E polar.

The correct answer is B, Meghalaya. The Garo, Khasi and Jaintia hills lie in Meghalaya and together form the Meghalaya plateau.

This plateau is a detached block of the peninsular plateau, separated from the main Chota Nagpur plateau by the Malda gap. Its southern slopes receive the full force of the Bay of Bengal branch of the south-west monsoon, which is why Mawsynram and Cherrapunji, both in the Khasi hills, are among the wettest places on earth. Shillong, the state capital, stands on these hills, and Shillong Peak is the highest point. The Garo hills are home to the Garo people and the Khasi hills to the Khasis.

Option A, Mizoram, has the Mizo or Lushai hills. Option C, Sikkim, lies in the eastern Himalayas. Option D, Odisha, has the Eastern Ghats and hills such as Deomali.

Exam tip: Garo, Khasi and Jaintia hills in Meghalaya; Mawsynram and Cherrapunji in the Khasi hills.

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 D, Tropical Deciduous Forests. These monsoon forests cover the largest part of India, so they are the most widespread forest type in the country.

They grow where annual rainfall is between about 70 cm and 200 cm, and the trees shed their leaves for six to eight weeks in the dry season. Moist deciduous forests, with teak, sal, shisham and sandalwood, occupy the wetter belts of the north-east, the Shiwalik foothills, Odisha and the eastern slopes of the Western Ghats; drier deciduous forests, with teak, palas and khair, run across the rainier parts of the peninsula and the plains of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.

Option A, montane forests, follow altitude in the hills. Option B, mangroves, are limited to deltas and tidal coasts. Option C, tropical evergreen forests, need over 200 cm of rain and are confined to the Western Ghats, the north-east and the islands.

Exam tip: deciduous forests are the most widespread; evergreen forests need over 200 cm of rainfall.

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 D, Rajasthan. The Khetri copper belt lies in the Jhunjhunu district of Rajasthan, in the north-eastern part of the state.

Khetri is the best known copper field of India and is worked by Hindustan Copper Limited. The belt runs along the Aravalli trend, and the other important Rajasthan field is Kho-Dariba in Alwar. Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh are the leading copper producers of the country; Madhya Pradesh has the large Malanjkhand deposit in Balaghat, and Jharkhand has the Singhbhum belt around Ghatsila.

Option A, Madhya Pradesh, holds Malanjkhand, not Khetri. Option B, Jharkhand, holds the Singhbhum copper belt. Option C, Uttar Pradesh, has no copper belt of importance. Remember that copper is a non-ferrous metal valued for being a good conductor and for being easy to draw into wire.

Exam tip: Khetri in Jhunjhunu, Rajasthan; Malanjkhand in Balaghat, Madhya Pradesh; Singhbhum in Jharkhand.

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 C, the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, a submarine mountain chain that runs down the middle of the Atlantic Ocean in the shape of an S, roughly parallel to the coasts on either side, and continues into the other oceans as part of a worldwide system of mid-oceanic ridges tens of thousands of kilometres long. It is a constructive plate margin, where molten rock rises and new ocean floor is created, and its highest peaks break the surface as islands such as Iceland and the Azores. Options A, B and D name great mountain chains of the land, the Andes of South America, the Himalayas of Asia and the Rockies of North America, but every one of them is shorter than the submerged ridge system, which is why the question is a favourite in examinations.

The correct answer is C, 1,620 km, which makes National Waterway 1 the longest of India's national waterways and the one with the largest cargo movement. Option A, 891 km, is the length of National Waterway 2 on the Brahmaputra between Dhubri and Sadiya, and it is the figure most often swapped with this one. Option B, 1,095 km, is the length of National Waterway 4, which uses the Kakinada and Puducherry canals with stretches of the Godavari and the Krishna. Option D is simply larger than any single national waterway and does not match any of them. A useful way to remember the set is 1,620 for NW-1, 891 for NW-2, 205 for NW-3, 1,095 for NW-4 and 623 for NW-5. Note also that the Prayagraj end was earlier written as Allahabad in older papers, so both names appear in question stems for the same waterway.

The correct answer is C, the Sutlej. The Bhakra dam stands on the Sutlej at Bhakra in Bilaspur district of Himachal Pradesh, with the Nangal barrage downstream in Punjab, and the reservoir behind it is Govind Sagar. The project supplies irrigation water and power to Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan and Himachal Pradesh and is the project Nehru described as a temple of resurgent India. Option A is wrong because the Beas carries the Pong dam, whose reservoir is Maharana Pratap Sagar, and the Pandoh dam. Option B is wrong because the Ravi carries the Thein or Ranjit Sagar dam in Punjab. Option D is wrong because the Chenab carries the Salal, Baglihar and Dulhasti projects in Jammu and Kashmir. All four are rivers of the Indus system, which is why they appear together as options.

The correct answer is D, flow channel. In a flow channel the water runs from the canal head down to the fields purely under gravity, because the bed of the canal is laid at a slope and the source lies higher than the land it serves. Canals are therefore taken off a river or a reservoir at a point high enough for the water to move on its own, and flow irrigation is cheaper to run than any system that needs machinery. Option A is wrong because a lift channel carries water that has to be raised by pumps, the source lying below the land to be watered. Option B is wrong because the command area is the stretch of land a canal is able to irrigate, not a channel at all. Option C is wrong because warabandi is the roster that fixes each farmer's turn and time for drawing water, a method of sharing rather than a type of channel. Exam tip: flow irrigation works by gravity, lift irrigation needs pumps.

The correct answer is A, Little Andaman and Car Nicobar. The Ten Degree Channel runs along the tenth parallel of north latitude and is the dividing line between the Andaman group and the Nicobar group; Little Andaman is the southernmost island of the Andaman group and Car Nicobar the northernmost of the Nicobar group, so the channel lies between them. Option B is wrong because North Andaman and Middle Andaman are not divided by a named channel at all; together with South Andaman they form the single landmass called Great Andaman. Option C is wrong because the water between Great Nicobar and Sumatra is the Great Channel, also called the Six Degree Channel, which is India's maritime boundary with Indonesia. Option D is wrong because Minicoy is separated from the Maldives by the Eight Degree Channel, and from the rest of Lakshadweep by the Nine Degree Channel.

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 D, 4. Four Indian states touch Bhutan: Sikkim, West Bengal, Assam and Arunachal Pradesh.

The India-Bhutan boundary is about 699 kilometres long. Assam has the longest stretch of it, followed by Arunachal Pradesh, West Bengal and Sikkim. The border is open, and movement between the two countries is governed by the India-Bhutan Friendship Treaty of 1949, which was revised in 2007. Bhutan is a landlocked Himalayan kingdom whose capital is Thimphu and whose currency, the ngultrum, is pegged to the Indian rupee.

Option A, 5, overcounts; Meghalaya and Nagaland do not reach Bhutan. Option B, 3, leaves out one of the four. Option C, 2, is far too few. For comparison, Bangladesh touches five Indian states, Nepal five and China five.

Exam tip: Bhutan touches four states, remembered as SWAA, Sikkim, West Bengal, Assam and Arunachal Pradesh.

The correct answer is C, Reduction in the vegetation cover to arrest landslide. Cutting the vegetation on a slope makes landslides more likely, not less, so it can never be a mitigation measure. Roots bind the soil and hold a slope together, and the leaf cover breaks the force of falling rain; where the forest is cleared, the loose soil slides down with the first heavy spell. The measures actually used are hazard zonation and mapping, retaining walls and benching of slopes, control of surface and subsurface drainage, afforestation on the slope, and limits on construction and blasting in fragile hill areas. A is wrong because a retaining wall holds the slipping mass in place and is a standard engineering step. B is wrong because hazard mapping marks the vulnerable belts so that building can be kept away from them. D is wrong because leading rainwater and spring flow away removes the water pressure that sets a slide off. Exam tip: afforestation helps and deforestation hurts; in India the Himalayas and the Western Ghats are the most landslide-prone regions.

The correct answer is A, National Waterway 1. The Jal Marg Vikas Project, taken up with assistance from the World Bank, deepens the channel of the Ganga between Haldia and Varanasi and builds multi-modal terminals, jetties and navigation aids so that larger vessels can sail through the year. The terminals at Varanasi, Sahibganj and Haldia belong to this project. Option B is wrong because work on the Brahmaputra waterway runs under separate schemes centred on the Pandu terminal. Option C is wrong because National Waterway 3 in Kerala was already equipped for day and night navigation and needs no such capacity project. Option D is wrong because National Waterway 5, the East Coast Canal with the Brahmani and Mahanadi delta rivers, is developed in phases by the Authority itself.

The correct answer is A, the Mahanadi. 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. It was taken up in the first plan period to control the floods for which the Mahanadi delta was notorious, and it also irrigates a large command area and generates power. Option B is wrong because the Godavari carries projects such as Sriram Sagar, Polavaram and Jayakwadi, not Hirakud. Option C is wrong because the Subarnarekha has its own multipurpose project shared by Jharkhand, Odisha and West Bengal. Option D is wrong because the Brahmani carries the Rengali project in Odisha. All four rivers drain to the Bay of Bengal, which is why they are set together.

The correct answer is B, Indira Point. Indira Point stands at the southern end of Great Nicobar in the Nicobar group and is the southernmost point of the territory of India; it was known earlier as Pygmalion Point and as Parson Point. Option A is wrong because Kanyakumari is only the southernmost point of the Indian mainland, not of Indian territory, and students lose the mark by confusing the two phrasings. Option C is wrong because Minicoy is the southernmost island of Lakshadweep in the Arabian Sea, which lies well to the north of Indira Point. Option D is wrong because Point Calimere, or Kodikkarai, is a headland on the Tamil Nadu coast in the Palk Strait area, known for its bird sanctuary, and is nowhere near the southern limit of Indian territory.

The correct answer is C, Myanmar and Bangladesh. On the east, India has a land boundary with Myanmar and Bangladesh.

India shares land borders with seven countries. Bangladesh has the longest at about 4,096 kilometres and lies to the east and north-east; Myanmar, about 1,643 kilometres, lies along the eastern edge of the north-east, touching Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Manipur and Mizoram. To the north and north-east are China, Nepal and Bhutan, while Pakistan and Afghanistan lie to the north-west.

Option A names China, Nepal and Bhutan, which are northern neighbours. Option B pairs Bhutan with Afghanistan, which are on opposite sides of the country. Option D names Pakistan and Afghanistan, both to the west and north-west. Note also that Sri Lanka and the Maldives are maritime neighbours with no land boundary.

Exam tip: east means Bangladesh and Myanmar; longest border is with Bangladesh, shortest with Afghanistan.