World Rivers, Mountains and Deserts: Facts and PYQs

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 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 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 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, 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.

The correct answer is C, Chile. The Atacama lies along the Pacific side of northern Chile, dried by two causes together: the Andes block moisture from the Amazon side and put it in a deep rain shadow, and the cold Peru or Humboldt current offshore chills the air so that little moisture moves inland. Some of its weather stations have recorded no measurable rain for years at a stretch. Option A, Mexico, holds parts of the Sonoran and Chihuahuan deserts, which are arid but not the driest. Option B, Namibia, has the Namib, a coastal desert that is among the oldest on earth and is cooled by the Benguela current, and it is often offered here as the near miss. Option D, Argentina, has the Patagonian Desert, the largest in South America, lying in the rain shadow on the eastern side of the same Andes.

The correct answer is B, the Congo. Its basin lies on both sides of the Equator in central Africa, so the river crosses the line once as it flows north and again as it swings west and south towards the Atlantic. The effect matters: some part of the basin is always in its rainy season, so the discharge stays high through the year and the Congo ranks second in the world by volume after the Amazon. It is also the deepest river on earth. Option A, the Amazon, flows close to and just south of the Equator but does not cross it twice. Option C, the Niger, makes a great arc through West Africa well to the north of the line and ends in the Gulf of Guinea. Option D, the Zambezi, lies entirely in the southern hemisphere and carries the Victoria Falls on the border of Zambia and Zimbabwe.

The correct answer is C, the Caspian Sea. The Volga rises in the hills north-west of Moscow, flows across European Russia and ends in a delta near Astrakhan on the Caspian, which is a landlocked basin and the largest inland water body on earth. Because the Caspian has no outlet to an ocean, the Volga is the classic example of a river draining into an inland sea. Option A, the Black Sea, receives the Danube, the Dnieper and the Don, not the Volga. Option B, the Baltic Sea, receives the Vistula, the Oder and the Neva. Option D, the North Sea, receives the Rhine, the Elbe and the Thames. A second fact worth carrying with this one is that the Volga is the longest river that lies wholly within one country in Europe, and that a canal links it to the Don and so to the Black Sea.

The correct answer is B, the Ural mountains. The range runs roughly north to south through Russia from the Arctic coast towards the Caspian, and geographers have long used it, with the Ural river and the Caucasus, as the conventional line dividing the European part of Eurasia from the Asian part. Option A, the Alps, lies well inside Europe and divides Italy from France, Switzerland and Austria; Mont Blanc is its highest peak. Option C, the Carpathians, curves through central and eastern Europe from Slovakia to Romania and holds the Transylvanian basin inside its arc. Option D, the Pyrenees, forms the border between France and Spain and shelters the small state of Andorra. A related fact often asked alongside this one is that the highest peak of Europe is Mount Elbrus in the Caucasus, not Mont Blanc in the Alps.

The correct answer is B, the Arabian Desert. The Rub al Khali, whose name is usually translated as the Empty Quarter, occupies the southern part of the Arabian Peninsula across Saudi Arabia, Oman, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen, and it is the largest unbroken sand sea on earth. Option A, the Sahara, is much larger overall but is a mosaic of sand seas, called ergs, together with gravel plains and bare rock, so no single body of sand in it matches the Empty Quarter. Option C, the Thar or Great Indian Desert, lies mainly in Rajasthan and extends into Pakistan, and is far smaller. Option D, the Takla Makan, is a cold sand desert in Xinjiang in China, ringed by the Kunlun, Pamir and Tian Shan mountains. Keep the Empty Quarter with Arabia and the ergs with the Sahara.

The correct answer is B, the Danube. It rises in the Black Forest of Germany, flows east across central and south-eastern Europe past Vienna in Austria, Bratislava in Slovakia, Budapest in Hungary and Belgrade in Serbia, and ends in a delta on the Black Sea. It passes through or along the border of more countries than any other river in the world, which is the fact papers ask most often about it. Option A, the Rhine, flows north from the Alps through Switzerland and Germany to the Netherlands and the North Sea, past Basel, Cologne and Rotterdam. Option C, the Elbe, rises in the Czech lands and reaches the North Sea at Hamburg, passing Dresden on the way. Option D, the Seine, is the river of Paris and reaches the English Channel near Le Havre. Pair each capital with its river, because the question is often reversed.