Geography Mixed Quiz: Set 55

The correct answer is D, All four. A volcanic eruption throws out solid fragments, fine ash and dust, and a mixture of gases that includes nitrogen and sulphur compounds.

Material released by a volcano is of three kinds. Solid matter includes pyroclastic debris, the broken pieces of rock and lava blown out by the explosion, ranging from large volcanic bombs to small lapilli, along with fine ash and dust that can spread across continents. Liquid matter is the lava. Gases are mostly water vapour, followed by carbon dioxide, sulphur compounds such as sulphur dioxide and hydrogen sulphide, and nitrogen compounds, with smaller amounts of chlorine, hydrogen and argon. Sulphur dioxide forms sulphate aerosols in the stratosphere that can cool the climate for a year or two.

A is wrong because more than one item is a volcanic product.

B is wrong because the gases, not only the solids, come from eruptions.

C is wrong because none of the four can be left out.

Exam tip: volcanic gases = mostly water vapour, then carbon dioxide, sulphur and nitrogen compounds.

The correct answer is C, which names a compact pattern. The Ganga-Yamuna Doab is a level alluvial plain with deep fertile soil, assured water from wells, canals and a high water table, and a long history of dense farming settlement, so its villages are compact or nucleated: the houses stand packed together in one block with narrow lanes, and the fields lie all around. A, scattered, is wrong because a scattered or dispersed pattern belongs to hilly and forested country such as Meghalaya, Uttarakhand and the hills of Kerala, where terrain and small patches of cultivable land keep farmsteads apart. B, random, is wrong because it describes no recognised pattern of Indian rural settlement. D, semi sprinkled, is wrong because a semi-clustered or fragmented pattern is typical of the Gujarat plain and parts of Rajasthan, where one compact core is joined by a few clusters set some distance away.

The correct answer is A, both statements are correct and Statement-II explains Statement-I. The troposphere is thickest over the equator because strong convection there carries heat high into the air.

The troposphere, the lowest layer of the atmosphere where almost all weather occurs, is about 18 km thick at the equator but only about 8 km at the poles. Intense heating of the surface near the equator sets up powerful rising convection currents, which lift warm air and moisture to great heights and push the top of the layer, the tropopause, upward. Over the cold poles convection is weak, so the layer stays shallow. Temperature in the troposphere falls by about 6.5 °C per kilometre of height.

B is wrong because convection is exactly the reason for the greater thickness.

C is wrong because Statement-II is correct.

D is wrong because Statement-I is correct.

Exam tip: troposphere about 18 km at the equator, about 8 km at the poles, because of convection.

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, Only two. Mahua and teak shed their leaves in the dry season, while the jackfruit tree is evergreen.

Deciduous trees drop all their leaves for a few weeks in the dry summer to save water; they make up India's tropical moist and dry deciduous forests, the most widespread forest type in the country. Teak is the best-known tree of these forests, found in Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Kerala. Mahua is a deciduous tree of central India whose flowers are eaten and used to make liquor, and whose seeds give oil; it matters greatly to tribal communities. The jackfruit, by contrast, keeps its glossy leaves all year and grows in the humid Western Ghats and coastal regions.

A is wrong because two of the trees, not one, are deciduous.

C is wrong because the jackfruit is evergreen.

D is wrong because teak and mahua are typical deciduous trees.

Exam tip: teak, sal, mahua, sandalwood = deciduous; jackfruit, rosewood, mahogany = evergreen.

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, Only two pairs. Pairs 1 and 2 are correct; Visakhapatnam is not India's largest container port.

Kamarajar Port at Ennore, near Chennai in Tamil Nadu, was the first major port in India to be set up as a corporate entity, registered as a public company (Ennore Port Ltd). Mundra Port in Kutch, Gujarat, run by the Adani group, is the largest privately owned port in India. Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh is a major port known for iron ore and bulk cargo and has a deep natural harbour, but the biggest container traffic is handled on the west coast, at Jawaharlal Nehru Port (Nhava Sheva) and Mundra.

A is wrong because two pairs, not one, are correct.

C is wrong because pair 3 is incorrect.

D is wrong because pairs 1 and 2 are correctly matched.

Exam tip: Kamarajar (Ennore) = first corporatised major port; Mundra = largest private port; container giants are on the west coast.

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. The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015 to 2030 was adopted at the Third United Nations World Conference held at Sendai in Japan in 2015, and it took the place of the Hyogo Framework for Action of 2005 to 2015, which had itself been adopted in Japan at Kobe in Hyogo prefecture. A is wrong because 2005 is the year of the Hyogo Framework, which replaced the Yokohama Strategy of 1994, so the pairing is shifted by one stage. C is wrong because the Kyoto Protocol of 1997 is a climate change treaty on greenhouse gas emissions and has nothing to do with disaster risk reduction. D is wrong because the Paris Agreement of 2015 is also a climate agreement and is still in force. Note that both disaster frameworks were adopted in Japan.

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 D, all three factors. 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 availability of work opportunities is the single largest reason for rural to urban migration in India, counted in the Census under the head of work or employment. The hope of a better standard of living, through schooling, health care and services, is a related pull that moves whole families. Marriage is the largest single reason for migration in India by number, because most women move to their husband's residence after marriage, and the Census records it as a separate category. Since each of the three is relevant, A, which leaves out marriage, B, which leaves out work opportunities, and C, which leaves out the standard of living, are each incomplete and therefore wrong.

The correct answer is C, Thar Desert. A desert shows the largest difference between day and night temperature, called the diurnal range, because dry sand heats up quickly in the day and the cloudless, moisture-free air lets that heat escape just as quickly after sunset. Water vapour and clouds work like a blanket over the ground; where they are absent, as in western Rajasthan, summer days can touch 50 degrees Celsius while the night turns cold, and the daily range often crosses 20 degrees. Option A is wrong because Chilika Lake is a coastal lagoon, and the large water body with the sea breeze keeps its temperature even through the day. Option B is wrong because the Andaman and Nicobar Islands have a humid maritime climate with a very small daily range. Option D is wrong because Mount Everest is extreme in its low temperature, not in its day and night swing. Exam tip: dry air and clear skies give a high diurnal range; humidity and water bodies cut it down.

The correct answer is C, seven. India has a land boundary with Pakistan, Afghanistan, China, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Myanmar. Option D, nine, is the commonest trap, because nine is the number of neighbours in all when Sri Lanka and the Maldives are added, and those two are maritime neighbours separated by water, not land. Option A is wrong, and option B, five, is the figure students reach when they forget Afghanistan and one of the smaller frontiers; the Afghan border is only about 106 kilometres long and lies in the Pakistan-occupied part of the former state of Jammu and Kashmir, which is why it slips out of memory. Learn the seven in order of length: Bangladesh, China, Pakistan, Nepal, Myanmar, Bhutan, Afghanistan. The same chapter supplies the companion figures: a land frontier of about 15,200 kilometres and a coastline of about 7,516 kilometres counting the island groups.

The correct answer is D, Trans-Siberian Railways. The Trans-Siberian Railway is the longest railway line in the world, about 9,289 km from Moscow, with through services from St. Petersburg, to Vladivostok on the Pacific coast of Russia. Built between 1891 and 1916, it crosses the Ural mountains, seven time zones and the great Siberian rivers, and it opened the forests, coal, oil and minerals of Siberia to settlement and trade; Vladivostok at its eastern end is Russia's chief Pacific port. Option A is wrong because the Altai railway is only a branch serving the Altai region of southern Siberia. Option B is wrong because the Amur railway is one section of the Trans-Siberian route in the far east, not the whole line. Option C is wrong because the Trans-Baikal railway is likewise a stretch of the same system near Lake Baikal. Exam tip: the Trans-Siberian is the world's longest railway, and the Trans-Canadian and the Australian Trans-Continental are the other transcontinental lines to remember.

The correct answer is B, India and Sri Lanka. The Palk Strait lies between the Ramanathapuram coast of Tamil Nadu and the Jaffna region of northern Sri Lanka, and it joins Palk Bay in the north with the Gulf of Mannar in the south; the shoals of Adam's Bridge run across its southern end. A is wrong because India and Myanmar are separated in the sea by the Coco Channel near North Andaman and share a land boundary in the north-east, not a strait in the south. C is wrong because the Maldives lie far out in the Arabian Sea and are separated from Minicoy of Lakshadweep by the Eight Degree Channel. D is wrong because Indonesia is separated from the Indian islands by a wide stretch of the Andaman Sea, the nearest Indonesian point to India being Sumatra off Great Nicobar.

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 A, 1 only. In January the northern oceans are warmer than the frozen continents, so isotherms bend north over the sea and south over the land; the Gulf Stream and North Atlantic Drift are warm currents, not cold ones.

Isotherms are lines joining places of equal temperature. In the northern hemisphere winter, land loses heat quickly and becomes very cold, while the ocean keeps its warmth. A given temperature is therefore found further north over the ocean and further south over the continents such as Siberia, which makes the lines bend. Statement 2 is wrong: the Gulf Stream and the North Atlantic Drift carry warm tropical water into the North Atlantic, making it warmer, and that warmth is why the isotherms bend sharply north there, keeping ports of north-west Europe ice-free.

B is wrong because statement 2 calls warm currents cold.

C is wrong because statement 2 is false.

D is wrong because statement 1 is a correct inference.

Exam tip: January isotherms bend poleward over oceans and equatorward over land; Gulf Stream and North Atlantic Drift are warm currents.

The correct answer is C, Statement I is true but Statement II is false. Plantations do lie mostly in the humid tropics, but the soils there are generally poor, not highly fertile.

Plantation farming grows a single cash crop such as tea, coffee, rubber, sugarcane, cocoa, banana or oil palm on large estates with heavy capital and hired labour. It spread in the humid tropics of Asia, Africa and Latin America, largely under colonial rule, because these crops need high temperatures and heavy rain throughout the year. The same heavy rain leaches nutrients out of the soil, leaving laterite and other weathered red soils that are low in humus and plant food; the lush forest survives by quickly recycling nutrients from fallen leaves.

A is wrong: Statement II is false, so it cannot explain Statement I.

B is wrong: it treats the false Statement II as true.

D is wrong: Statement I is true and Statement II is false, the reverse of this option.

Exam tip: humid tropics have lush forest but leached, infertile laterite soil; plantations need the climate, not rich soil.

The correct answer is D, Statement-I is incorrect, but Statement-II is correct. The atmosphere is heated mainly from below, by the Earth's own long wave (terrestrial) radiation, not directly by sunlight.

Incoming solar radiation is short wave, and the atmosphere is largely transparent to it, so most of it passes through and heats the Earth's surface. The warmed surface then gives off heat as long wave infrared radiation. Water vapour, carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases absorb this long wave radiation well, and this is what warms the lower atmosphere. That is also why temperature normally falls with height in the troposphere.

A and B are wrong because Statement-I itself is false, so neither can be the answer.

C is wrong because it reverses the truth: Statement-I is the incorrect one, while Statement-II correctly describes greenhouse gases.

Exam tip: Sun gives short wave radiation that heats the ground; the ground gives long wave radiation that heats the air.

The correct answer is C, about 27 degrees Celsius. A tropical cyclone is driven by the latent heat released when water vapour condenses, so it needs a large warm ocean surface of at least about 27 degrees to supply enough moisture, along with sufficient Coriolis force, which is why cyclones do not form within about five degrees of the equator, and weak vertical wind shear aloft. A and B are wrong because seas at 15 or 20 degrees cannot supply the latent heat required and are typical of higher latitudes where temperate cyclones form instead, from the meeting of warm and cold air masses. D is wrong because open sea surfaces do not reach 40 degrees anywhere on earth; such temperatures occur over land. The cyclone also weakens rapidly after landfall precisely because its supply of warm moist air is cut off.