Geography Mixed Quiz: Set 56

The correct answer is A, the Central Water Commission. It maintains forecasting stations on the major rivers and issues level and inflow forecasts to the State authorities, working with the rainfall data of the India Meteorological Department. B is wrong because the Geological Survey of India is the nodal agency for landslide studies and hazard zonation, not for floods. C is wrong because INCOIS at Hyderabad is the tsunami and ocean information centre, which also issues storm surge and high wave bulletins but not river flood forecasts. D is wrong because the National Institute of Disaster Management in New Delhi is a training and research institution under the Disaster Management Act and issues no operational warnings. Matching questions on nodal agencies are common, so also remember the Snow and Avalanche Study Establishment for avalanches.

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, Goa. At the Census of 2011 about sixty-two per cent of Goa's population lived in urban areas, the highest share among the states, followed by Mizoram at about fifty-two per cent and Tamil Nadu at about forty-eight per cent. A, Maharashtra, is the commonest trap, because it had the largest urban population in absolute numbers, more than fifty million, but its urban share was about forty-five per cent, which is lower than Goa's. B, Tamil Nadu, is wrong for the same kind of reason: it is highly urbanised but stands below Goa and Mizoram in share. D, Kerala, is wrong on the figures, at about forty-eight per cent, although its settlement is so continuous that the line between rural and urban is blurred there. Among the union territories Delhi stood highest, at about ninety-seven per cent.

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 B, Bhutan. Of the four countries offered here Bhutan is by far the smallest, a landlocked Himalayan kingdom whose border with India runs about 699 kilometres along Sikkim, West Bengal, Assam and Arunachal Pradesh. Option C is wrong because Nepal, though also landlocked and small, is several times larger than Bhutan in area. Options A and D are wrong because Myanmar and Pakistan are both large countries, Pakistan being the bigger of the two. Note the wider fact behind this question: among all nine of India's neighbours the smallest in area is the Maldives, an island republic, and the largest is China; so an examiner who includes the Maldives in the options changes the answer, and the list of options must be read carefully.

The correct answer is A, Class I. The Census of India groups towns into six classes by population: Class I of one hundred thousand and above, Class II of fifty thousand to ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine, Class III of twenty thousand to forty-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine, Class IV of ten thousand to nineteen thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine, Class V of five thousand to nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine, and Class VI of less than five thousand. So B, C and D are all wrong for a town of a lakh, and each belongs to a smaller band as listed. A further step beyond Class I is worth remembering: a city of a million or more is called a metropolitan city, and one of five million or more a megacity.

The correct answer is C, the Gulf of Oman. 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. A is wrong because the Red Sea lies on the other side of the Arabian peninsula and is reached from the Indian Ocean through Bab-el-Mandeb. B is wrong because the Gulf of Aden lies off Yemen and Somalia and is joined to the Red Sea, not to the Persian Gulf. D is wrong because the Mediterranean Sea is linked to the Red Sea by the Suez Canal and to the Atlantic by the Strait of Gibraltar, and has no direct opening into the Persian Gulf.

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 C, meteorological drought. It is defined purely in terms of rainfall: a significant deficiency of precipitation over an area compared with its long-period average, and it is the first stage from which the other kinds of drought follow. A is wrong because agricultural drought is a shortage of soil moisture at the time crops need it, which can occur even in a year of normal total rainfall if the rain comes at the wrong time, and can be avoided by irrigation. B is wrong because hydrological drought is the stage at which reservoirs, rivers, lakes and the water table fall below their normal levels after repeated rainfall failure. D is wrong because socio-economic drought describes the effect on the supply of food, fodder, water and employment, which is a consequence rather than the meteorological definition.

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, a continuous urban spread made up of a town and its adjoining outgrowths. An urban agglomeration is the built-up whole rather than the municipal unit: it is a town together with its outgrowths, or two or more physically contiguous towns with their outgrowths, where an outgrowth is a clearly identifiable area such as a railway colony, a university campus, a port area or a military camp that lies outside the statutory limits but adjoins the town. A is wrong because a population of a million makes a city metropolitan, which is a size class and not an agglomeration. C is wrong because a group of villages under one panchayat is a rural unit with no bearing on this definition. D is wrong because selection under the Smart Cities Mission is a programme decision and has nothing to do with the census definition.

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, Assam. Nepal touches five Indian states, namely Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal and Sikkim, so options A, B and C are all genuine Nepal border states and only Assam is not. Assam has international borders of its own, with Bhutan in the north and Bangladesh in the south-west, which is exactly why it is offered here and why the question catches so many students. The geography is worth picturing: the Nepal frontier runs along the Himalayan foothills from Uttarakhand eastward to Sikkim, and between Nepal and Assam lies the narrow Siliguri Corridor of West Bengal, the Chicken's Neck, which separates the two and carries all traffic to the North-East. A useful cross-check is that Bihar also borders Nepal, so a version of this question listing Bihar, Sikkim and Uttarakhand against Assam has the same answer.

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, the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea. The Suez Canal, opened in 1869, runs about 193 kilometres across the Isthmus of Suez in Egypt from Port Said on the Mediterranean to the city of Suez on the Red Sea, and because the two seas stand at nearly the same level the canal needs no locks. B is wrong because the Atlantic and the Pacific are joined by the Panama Canal across the Isthmus of Panama. C is wrong because the North Sea and the Baltic are joined by the Kiel Canal in Germany, opened in 1895. D is wrong because the Black Sea reaches the Aegean through the Bosporus, the Sea of Marmara and the Dardanelles, a natural chain of straits in Turkey and not a canal at all.

The correct answer is C, Gorges. In its upper course a river flows fast down steep slopes, so it cuts downward into the rock more than it spreads sideways. This vertical erosion makes deep, narrow valleys with steep sides: V-shaped valleys and, where the rock is hard, gorges. Waterfalls and rapids also belong to this young stage of a river. A famous example is the Indus gorge in the Himalayas, and the Narmada flows through a marble gorge at Bhedaghat near Jabalpur. A is wrong because oxbow lakes form in the lower course, when a loop of a meander is cut off from the main channel. B is wrong because meanders, the wide loops of a river, form in the middle and lower course, where the land is gentle and the river swings sideways. D is wrong because floodplains form in the lower course, where the river spreads out and leaves silt during floods. Exam tip: upper course, V-shaped valley, gorge and waterfall; lower course, meander, oxbow lake, floodplain and delta.

The correct answer is B, the Meghalaya hills. A dispersed or isolated pattern, in which a farmstead or two or three houses stand far from the next, is found where the terrain is broken and the patches of cultivable land are small and scattered, as in Meghalaya, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh and the hills of Kerala. A, the Punjab plain, is wrong because a level, fertile and well-watered plain supports the compact or nucleated village, with houses packed into a single block. C, the lower Ganga plain, is wrong because it is the classic region of the hamleted village, broken into units called para or palli under one village name. D, the Gujarat plain, is wrong because it is the usual example of the semi-clustered or fragmented pattern, where one compact core has a few separate clusters nearby.

The correct answer is A, China, which was never a British territory and is therefore not a member of the Commonwealth of Nations, so it does not take part in the Commonwealth Games. Options B, C and D are wrong because Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sri Lanka were all part of British India or British Ceylon and are Commonwealth members whose teams compete at the Games. Among India's other neighbours, the Maldives joined the Commonwealth, left and later rejoined, while Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar and Afghanistan are not members. The point to carry away is that Commonwealth membership follows the old British connection, so China and Nepal, which were never British possessions, stand outside it. Among the neighbours that do compete, Sri Lanka and Pakistan have both hosted or contested the Games for decades, and the Commonwealth itself now admits a few states with no British past, such as Rwanda and Mozambique.

The correct answer is C, Gatun Lake. The Panama Canal does not cut through at sea level; ships are lifted by locks into the artificial Gatun Lake, sail across it and through the Culebra or Gaillard Cut, and are then lowered by locks on the other side, which is why the canal needs a large freshwater reservoir. A is wrong because Lake Maracaibo is in Venezuela, an inlet of the Caribbean and not part of any canal. B is wrong because Lake Titicaca lies high in the Andes on the border of Peru and Bolivia and is the highest navigable lake in the world, far from Panama. D is wrong because Lake Nicaragua was considered for a rival canal route in the nineteenth century, and a Nicaraguan canal has been proposed many times, but no such canal carries shipping today.

The correct answer is B, industrial towns. Each of the three grew around a factory: Jamshedpur around the steel works set up by the Tata enterprise, Bhilai around the public sector steel plant built with Soviet collaboration, and Modinagar around the industries of the Modi group, so industry is their dominant function. A, transport towns, is wrong because that class is made up of ports and railway junctions such as Kandla, Kochi and Mughalsarai, which exist to move goods and people. C, garrison towns, is wrong because those are the cantonments such as Ambala, Jalandhar and Mhow, laid out around a military station. D, religious towns, is wrong because those are the pilgrim centres such as Varanasi, Tirupati, Ajmer and Amritsar, whose economy rests on the shrine and on the pilgrims it draws.