Geography Mixed Quiz: Set 59

The correct answer is C, The summer solstice occurs in northern hemisphere on June 21 and on December 21 in southern hemisphere. The two hemispheres always have opposite seasons, so one hemisphere's summer solstice is the other's winter solstice.

On about 21 June the Sun is overhead at the Tropic of Cancer; the northern hemisphere has its longest day and summer begins there, while the southern hemisphere has its shortest day. On about 22 December the Sun is overhead at the Tropic of Capricorn, and the roles reverse: Australia and Argentina have their summer solstice. The cause is the Earth's axis, tilted at about 23.5°.

A is wrong: 21 June is winter solstice only in the southern hemisphere, not in both.

B is wrong: December 21 is winter solstice only in the northern hemisphere.

D is wrong: it swaps the dates; the northern summer solstice is in June, not December.

Exam tip: 21 June = Sun over Tropic of Cancer (northern summer); 22 December = Tropic of Capricorn (southern summer).

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, Both 1 and 2. The Coriolis force grows with the speed of the wind and with latitude, so it is strongest at the poles and zero at the equator.

The Coriolis force is an apparent force caused by the Earth's rotation. It deflects moving air and water to the right in the Northern Hemisphere and to the left in the Southern Hemisphere. Its strength is proportional to the speed of the moving body and to the sine of the latitude. At the equator the sine of zero degrees is zero, so there is no deflection, while at the poles it reaches its maximum. Because of this, tropical cyclones do not form within about 5 degrees of the equator, where the force is too weak to set up the spinning motion. It also explains why winds blow parallel to the isobars in the upper air, as geostrophic winds.

A is wrong: it leaves out statement 2, which is also correct.

B is wrong: it leaves out statement 1.

D is wrong: both statements are correct.

Exam tip: Coriolis force depends on wind speed and latitude; zero at the equator, maximum at the poles; right in the north, left in the south.

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, None. Each statement places the hills in the wrong range.

Statement 1 is wrong: Amarkantak, the source of the Narmada and the Son, lies in the Maikal hills where the Vindhya and Satpura ranges meet. The Sahyadri, or Western Ghats, are far to the south-west.

Statement 2 is wrong: the Biligirirangan (BR) Hills are in Chamarajanagar district of Karnataka, at the meeting point of the Eastern and Western Ghats. They are home to the BRT Tiger Reserve and have nothing to do with the Satpura range of central India.

Statement 3 is wrong: the Seshachalam Hills, on which Tirumala and Tirupati stand, are part of the Eastern Ghats in Andhra Pradesh. The southern end of the Western Ghats is formed by ranges such as the Anaimalai, Cardamom and Agasthyamalai hills.

So A, B and C are wrong because not a single statement is correct.

Exam tip: Amarkantak = Vindhya-Satpura junction (Maikal); BR Hills = Eastern and Western Ghats junction; Seshachalam = Eastern Ghats (Tirupati).

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 A, Only one. Only row 2 is fully correct; rows 1 and 3 each have a wrong entry.

Hundru Falls, near Ranchi in Jharkhand, is formed where the Subarnarekha river drops off the edge of the Ranchi plateau, part of the Chota Nagpur region, so row 2 is right. Dhuandhar Falls is on the Narmada at Bhedaghat near Jabalpur, where the river plunges into the marble gorge; Jabalpur lies in the Mahakoshal region between the Vindhya and Satpura ranges, not on the Malwa plateau, so row 1 fails on the region. Gersoppa Falls, better known as Jog Falls, is in the Western Ghats of Shivamogga district, Karnataka, but it is formed by the Sharavathi river, not the Netravati, so row 3 fails on the river.

B is wrong: only one row, not two, is correct.

C is wrong: rows 1 and 3 contain errors.

D is wrong: row 2 is correctly matched.

Exam tip: Jog/Gersoppa = Sharavathi; Dhuandhar = Narmada at Bhedaghat, Jabalpur; Hundru = Subarnarekha, Ranchi.

The correct answer is B, Patrick Geddes. The Scottish geographer and town planner Patrick Geddes coined the word conurbation in 1915 for a great urban mass formed when separate towns grow outward until their built-up areas merge, as in Greater London or the Ruhr. A, Jean Gottmann, is the main trap: he gave the term megalopolis in 1957 for an even larger super-metropolitan belt, such as the chain from Boston to Washington. C, Ebenezer Howard, is wrong because his contribution was the garden city idea, a planned town ringed by a green belt, which influenced the planning of New Delhi and of several Indian townships. D, Lewis Mumford, is wrong because he wrote on the history and culture of cities rather than giving this term; he did, however, popularise Geddes's ideas.

The correct answer is C, Pakistan. Sir Creek is a tidal creek in the marshland of the Rann of Kutch, where India and Pakistan read the boundary resolution of 1914 differently, one side placing the boundary in the middle of the channel and the other on its eastern bank; the stretch matters because it affects the maritime boundary and fishing rights beyond it. Option A is wrong because the disputes with China lie in Aksai Chin and along the McMahon Line. Option B is wrong because the enclave and boundary questions with Bangladesh were settled by the Land Boundary Agreement ratified in 2015. Option D is wrong because the India-Myanmar boundary has been demarcated and is not in dispute in this sense. Remember also that the creek opens into the Arabian Sea, so the unsettled stretch is only about ninety-six kilometres long but decides a far larger area of sea.

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 B, the Baltic Sea. The Kiel Canal, opened in 1895, cuts across the base of the Jutland peninsula in northern Germany and lets ships pass from the North Sea to the Baltic without sailing round Denmark; it is one of the busiest artificial waterways in the world. A is wrong because the Black Sea is reached from the Mediterranean through the Turkish straits and has no canal to the North Sea. C is wrong because the Caspian Sea is landlocked and is linked to the Black Sea and the Baltic only through the Russian river and canal system, such as the Volga-Don Canal. D is wrong because the Adriatic Sea is an arm of the Mediterranean between Italy and the Balkans and is nowhere near the German canal.

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, Sweden. Kiruna lies in Swedish Lapland, inside the Arctic Circle, and works a high-grade magnetite deposit of the Baltic Shield. Its ore is carried by rail to Narvik in Norway, an ice-free port warmed by the North Atlantic Drift, and to Lulea on the Gulf of Bothnia.

Option A, Norway, is only the outlet: Narvik handles Kiruna's ore but the mine is not Norwegian. Option C, Finland, shares the same shield and has copper, nickel and chromium mines, but no deposit of this fame. Option D, Denmark, is built of young sedimentary rock and has no metallic mining worth the name. The useful habit here is to link the ore to the shield it sits in, which is why northern Sweden, the Canadian Shield and Western Australia all appear in iron ore questions.

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. The representative fraction is a pure ratio without units, so one unit of length on the map stands for fifty thousand of the same units on the ground; it can be read in centimetres, inches or any other unit, which is why it is understood everywhere. Option B is wrong because it mixes the units: one centimetre on such a sheet stands for fifty thousand centimetres, that is half a kilometre, not fifty thousand kilometres. Option C is wrong because the representative fraction says nothing about the area a sheet covers; that depends on the size of the paper. Option D is wrong because the fraction compares the map with the ground, not with a photograph, and a map may be drawn from a ground survey with no photograph involved at all.

The correct answer is A, Canada and the United States of America. Their boundary, about 8,891 km long including the Alaska section, is the longest border between any two countries. It has two parts: about 6,400 km along the southern edge of Canada, much of it along the 49th parallel west of the Great Lakes and through the lakes themselves, and about 2,475 km between Alaska and Canada's Yukon and British Columbia. It is often called the world's longest undefended border and is looked after by the International Boundary Commission. Option D is wrong, though close: the Kazakhstan–Russia border, about 7,600 km, is the longest continuous land border. Option B is wrong because the Chile–Argentina border along the Andes, about 5,300 km, comes third. Option C is wrong because the China–India border is about 3,488 km. Exam tip: Canada–USA is the longest overall, Kazakhstan–Russia the longest continuous land border; India's longest border is with Bangladesh, 4,096 km.

The correct answer is A, Cameroon. South-eastern Cameroon lies inside the drainage area of the Congo river, and the country is one of the six nations that share the Congo Basin rainforest.

The Congo Basin is the huge, shallow depression drained by the Congo river and its tributaries in west-central Africa. It holds the second largest tropical rainforest on Earth after the Amazon. The countries usually counted as its core are the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Republic of the Congo, the Central African Republic, Cameroon, Gabon and Equatorial Guinea. The Sangha river, a Congo tributary, rises near the Cameroon border and drains its south-east.

B is wrong: Nigeria is drained by the Niger and Benue rivers, which flow to the Gulf of Guinea, not into the Congo.

C is wrong: South Sudan lies in the basin of the White Nile.

D is wrong: Uganda drains mainly into Lake Victoria and the Nile system.

Exam tip: Congo Basin forest countries are DRC, Republic of Congo, CAR, Cameroon, Gabon and Equatorial Guinea; the Congo river crosses the Equator twice.

The correct answer is C, Polynesia. New Zealand forms the south-western corner of the Polynesian Triangle in the Pacific Ocean.

The Pacific islands are grouped into three regions. Polynesia ("many islands") is a vast triangle with Hawaii in the north, Easter Island in the east and New Zealand in the south-west; it also includes Samoa, Tonga and Tahiti. The Maori, New Zealand's first people, are Polynesians who reached the islands by canoe around the 13th century, and their language is close to Hawaiian and Tahitian.

A is wrong: Micronesia ("small islands") lies north of the equator and includes Guam, the Marshall Islands and Kiribati.

B is wrong: Melanesia covers Papua New Guinea, Fiji, the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and New Caledonia, north-west of New Zealand.

D is wrong: the Hawaiian chain is a single archipelago at the northern tip of Polynesia, far from New Zealand.

Exam tip: Polynesian Triangle corners = Hawaii, Easter Island, New Zealand; Fiji is Melanesia; Guam is Micronesia.

The correct answer is B, Only two. Rows 3 and 4 are correct; rows 1 and 2 have the wrong region or type.

Fold mountains form when plates converge and layers of rock crumple. The Appalachians of eastern North America are old fold mountains raised in the Palaeozoic era and since worn down, and the Andes of South America are young fold mountains formed where the Nazca plate dives beneath the South American plate, so rows 3 and 4 are right. Block mountains form when a block of land is raised between faults; the Vosges in France and the Black Forest in Germany are classic examples, standing on either side of the Rhine rift valley. So row 1 is wrong, as the Vosges are in Europe and are block mountains. Row 2 is wrong because the Alps are young fold mountains, like the Himalayas.

A is wrong: two rows, not one, are correct.

C is wrong: only rows 3 and 4 are correct.

D is wrong: rows 1 and 2 contain errors.

Exam tip: block mountains = Vosges and Black Forest (Rhine rift); young fold = Alps, Himalayas, Andes, Rockies; old fold = Appalachians, Aravallis, Urals.

The correct answer is B, 2 only. A surface inversion makes the lower air stable, not unstable, and it usually breaks up a few hours after sunrise.

Normally temperature falls with height. On long, clear, calm winter nights, however, the ground loses heat quickly by radiation and the air touching it becomes colder than the air above. This is a surface inversion. Because cold, heavy air lies below warmer air, it cannot rise, so the lower atmosphere becomes stable: smoke, dust and moisture stay trapped near the ground, giving fog and smog. Once the Sun comes up and warms the ground, the inversion usually disappears. In polar areas it can last through the year.

A is wrong: statement 1 is incorrect, because an inversion brings stability, not instability.

C is wrong: only statement 2 is correct, so both cannot be.

D is wrong: statement 2 is correct, since such inversions usually last only until the Sun warms the surface.

Exam tip: inversion = cold air below warm air → stable air, fog and smog; common on clear winter nights.