UPSC Civil Services GK Questions 2026

Selvas is the name given to the equatorial rainforest of the Amazon basin, a multi storeyed evergreen forest of hardwoods such as mahogany, ebony and rosewood, with so many species mixed together that commercial logging of a single kind is difficult.

Hot deserts lie on the western margins of continents roughly between 20 and 30 degrees north and south, under the descending dry air of the subtropical high pressure belt.

The taiga is the belt of coniferous softwood forest between about 50 and 70 degrees latitude, and in the southern hemisphere that belt is almost entirely ocean: only the narrow tail of South America and a few islands reach it, which is far too little land for a continuous forest…

The Velds are the temperate grasslands of the high plateau of South Africa, where maize and cattle farming and the gold mining of the Witwatersrand go together.

The Llanos are the grasslands of the Orinoco basin in Venezuela and Colombia and the Campos those of the Brazilian highlands, and both lie in the savanna belt, where a hot wet season alternates with a sharply dry one and the grass grows tall and coarse with scattered thorny trees.

It lies on the western margins of continents between about 30 and 45 degrees latitude, and the wind belts shift with the sun: in winter the rain bearing westerlies move towards the equator and reach it, while in summer the dry descending air of the subtropical high sits over it.

In Koppen scheme the capital A stands for the tropical group, in which the coldest month is still above 18 degrees Celsius, and the small f stands for rain in every month of the year, so Af is the equatorial or tropical rainforest climate of the Amazon, the Congo and…

Bugyal is the local name in Uttarakhand for the alpine meadows that lie above the tree line in the Greater Himalayas, used by shepherds for summer grazing; in Kashmir the same meadows are called marg, which gives the names Gulmarg and Sonmarg.

North America and Prairie is right, as the prairies are the temperate grasslands of the United States and Canada and the granary of the world.

The Gobi lies in central Asia, across southern Mongolia and northern China, and it is a cold mid latitude desert: it is dry not because of the trade winds but because it is far from the sea and the Himalayan and other ranges cut off the monsoon, and its winters…

It is the polar belt beyond about 70 degrees latitude, where the warmest month stays below 10 degrees Celsius and the subsoil remains frozen as permafrost, so Koppen codes it ET in his polar E group.

The Pampas are the temperate grasslands of the lower Parana and Plata basin, spread mainly over Argentina and extending into Uruguay.

Keibul Lamjao, on Loktak lake in Manipur, rests on phumdis, floating mats of soil and decaying vegetation thick enough to carry the weight of a deer, which makes it the only floating national park in the world; the sangai that walks on them is the state animal of Manipur and…

The correct answer is A, Dachigam National Park, near Srinagar, which holds almost the whole surviving population of the hangul, the only species of red deer found in India and the state animal of Jammu and Kashmir.

The correct answer is A, the Gir forest of Gujarat, the last refuge of the Asiatic lion, which once ranged from west Asia to eastern India; the Asiatic Lion Conservation Project was launched in 2018 for it, and the Barda sanctuary nearby has been developed as a second habitat.

Vultures that fed on the carcasses of treated animals developed kidney failure and died, and three species of Gyps vulture declined catastrophically within a few years, which is why the veterinary use of the drug was banned in 2006 and meloxicam promoted as a safe substitute.

Every year thousands of females come ashore at Gahirmatha for the synchronised mass nesting called arribada, which makes it the largest rookery of the species in the world; Rushikulya on the same coast is the other major site, and the Sea Turtle Project of 1999 works at both.

The correct answer is C, Rajasthan, where the bird is called the godawan and where its stronghold, the Desert National Park near Jaisalmer, holds most of the surviving population; conservation breeding centres in that district raise chicks for release into the wild.

The correct answer is B, the Gangetic river dolphin, declared the National Aquatic Animal in 2009; it is nearly blind and navigates by echolocation, and Project Dolphin was announced in 2020 for its conservation along with other river and marine dolphins.

The correct answer is B, the elephant, declared the National Heritage Animal in 2010 in recognition of its place in Indian culture and of the need to protect its habitat and corridors; Project Elephant had already been launched for it in 1992.