Climate, Soils and Forests of Uttar Pradesh: Exam Notes

The correct answer is B, the Bay of Bengal branch of the south-west monsoon. This branch strikes the Ganga delta, is turned west by the Himalaya and moves up the Ganga plain, so it reaches eastern Uttar Pradesh about the middle of June and then travels on to the west, which is why the east of the state gets both earlier and heavier rain. Option A, the Arabian Sea branch, waters the west coast, Gujarat and the Deccan and reaches only the extreme west of Uttar Pradesh in a weakened form. Option C, the retreating or north-east monsoon, brings rain to Tamil Nadu and coastal Andhra Pradesh in October and November and has almost no effect here. Option D, western disturbances, do give the state a little winter rain, called mahawat, but that is a small fraction of the annual total, not the main source.

The correct answer is A, from south-east towards north-west. The monsoon current enters from the Bay of Bengal in the south-east and loses moisture as it travels up the plain, so the eastern districts and the Terai of Gorakhpur, Bahraich and Lakhimpur Kheri are the wettest, while Mathura, Agra and the Bundelkhand districts of Jhansi, Jalaun and Banda are the driest and are liable to drought. Option B reverses the gradient and would make the dry west the wettest part, which is not the case. Option C is wrong because the fall is not from north to south; indeed the northern foothill belt is wet. Option D is wrong because the state shows a wide range of rainfall from east to west. Keep in mind the second half of the picture: the wet eastern Terai also suffers floods from the Ghaghara, Rapti and Gandak.

The correct answer is B, the loo. It is a hot, dry and dusty wind that blows from the west over the northern plains in the afternoons of May and early June, pushing the temperature past forty-five degrees Celsius in Agra, Jhansi and Banda and causing heat stroke, and it stops only when the monsoon arrives. Option A, mahawat, is the opposite season: it is the light winter rain brought by western disturbances, which helps the rabi crop. Option C, pala, is the frost of January that can damage potato, mustard and gram. Option D, Kal Baisakhi, is the violent evening thunderstorm of West Bengal and the eastern states in April, the same family of storms that is called Norwester, and it is not a feature of Uttar Pradesh. Learn the three local words loo, mahawat and pala together, because the question usually mixes them.

The correct answer is B, the wheat and gram of the rabi season. Western disturbances travel from the Mediterranean across Iran and Pakistan and give the plains a few spells of light rain in December, January and February, exactly when wheat, gram, barley and mustard are standing in the field, so farmers call this shower the golden drops. Option A is wrong because paddy and sugarcane are kharif crops that grow in the monsoon and are already harvested or well grown by winter. Option C is wrong because jute is a kharif crop of the humid east, grown mainly in West Bengal rather than in Uttar Pradesh. Option D is wrong in the sense asked, because untimely rain and hail when the mango is in flower damage the crop rather than help it. The rainfall is small in quantity but large in value for the rabi harvest.

The correct answer is B, bhangar. Bhangar is the old alluvium of the higher ground away from the present river channels; it is darker, more clayey and dotted with the lime concretions called kankar, and it is not renewed by fresh silt. Option A, khadar, is the opposite: the new alluvium of the flood plain, lighter in colour and texture, renewed by silt at every flood and therefore more fertile, and known locally as kachhar. Option C, bhabar, is the narrow pebbly and porous belt along the Himalayan foothills in which streams disappear underground. Option D, bhur, is the sandy wind-blown soil of the upper Ganga-Yamuna doab. The khadar and bhangar pair is reversed by candidates more often than any other in this chapter, so fix it by the words new and old.

The correct answer is A, gypsum. Usar, also called reh, is the saline and alkaline soil of districts such as Raebareli, Unnao, Hardoi, Kanpur and Aligarh, where sodium salts gather on the surface; gypsum, which is calcium sulphate, replaces the sodium on the clay particles with calcium, the sodium is then washed away by drainage, and the land becomes fit for crops, with dhaincha sown as a green manure. Option B, lime, is used for the opposite problem, that is acidic soil, as in the laterite tracts of the Western Ghats or the north-east. Option C, urea, is a nitrogen fertiliser that adds a nutrient but does nothing about alkalinity. Option D, rock phosphate, supplies phosphorus. Remember the simple rule: gypsum for alkaline usar, lime for acid soil.

The correct answer is A, bhur. Bhur is the raised sandy soil of the upper doab in districts such as Meerut, Bulandshahr and Aligarh, blown into low ridges by the wind, poor in moisture and organic matter, and fit for bajra, barley and, where irrigation reaches, for sugarcane. Option B, matiyar, is the heavy clayey soil of eastern Uttar Pradesh that holds water and suits paddy. Option C, karail, is the black clayey soil of Bundelkhand and the Vindhyan tract that retains moisture and carries gram, wheat and oilseeds. Option D, parwa, is the loam of the plains, a balanced mixture of sand and clay, and the best wheat soil of the state. Learn these four local names as a set, since the question is almost always a match-the-pair between the name and either the texture or the district.

The correct answer is C, karail, also known with its relative mar as the black soil of Bundelkhand. Formed on the Vindhyan and Deccan trap rocks of the south, it is clayey, dark and able to hold water through a dry spell, which is why the gram, wheat, oilseed and pulse crops of Jhansi, Jalaun, Hamirpur and Banda depend on it. Option A, bhat, is the dark heavy soil of the river margins of eastern Uttar Pradesh. Option B, rakar, lies on the slopes of the same Bundelkhand region but is gravelly, shallow and poor, and is the soil that erosion leaves behind. Option D, khadar, is the new alluvium of the flood plains in the plain country to the north, not in Bundelkhand. The pair to remember for Bundelkhand is karail in the valleys and rakar on the slopes.

The correct answer is A, the Terai and Bhabar belt of the north. Heavy rainfall and a high water table there support tropical moist deciduous forest in which sal, Shorea robusta, is the chief tree, in Lakhimpur Kheri, Bahraich, Pilibhit, Shravasti, Balrampur and Gorakhpur, and Dudhwa National Park and the Pilibhit Tiger Reserve lie inside this belt. Option B, the Bundelkhand plateau, is drier and carries tropical dry deciduous and thorn forest with teak, dhak, khair and babool. Option C, the upper doab, is intensively cultivated and has hardly any natural forest left, only groves and plantations. Option D, the ravine lands of the Yamuna, carry thorny scrub on broken ground where soil has been washed away. Sal is also found in patches of Sonbhadra in the south-east, but the Terai is the answer expected.

The correct answer is A, Mirzapur and Sonbhadra, the Vindhyan districts of the south-east, where dry deciduous forest grows on hilly ground and the tendu tree is common; its leaves are collected and dried to roll bidis and give seasonal work to thousands of forest dwellers, along with khair for katha, mahua flowers and bamboo. Option B, Meerut and Saharanpur, lie in the irrigated and crowded western plain, where sugarcane rather than forest produce is the mainstay. Option C, Ayodhya and Sultanpur, are districts of the eastern plain with little forest. Option D, Mathura and Agra, are dry districts of the west known for ravines along the Yamuna and for scrub, not for tendu. Pair the produce with the tract: sal and timber with the Terai, tendu and katha with the Vindhyan districts.