Indian Geography Questions and Answers

Answer: B

Tadoba is in Chandrapur district of Maharashtra.

Tadoba-Andhari is the state's oldest and largest national park, notified in 1955, and is a tiger reserve under Project Tiger. Its teak and bamboo forest also shelters leopard, sloth bear and gaur.

Answer: D

Correct answer: Rajasthan

Rajasthan is the largest state by area, about 342,000 square kilometres - roughly a tenth of India. Madhya Pradesh is second, Maharashtra third and Uttar Pradesh fourth. Rajasthan became the largest in 2000, when Madhya Pradesh was divided and Chhattisgarh created out of it. Much of it is arid: the Thar Desert occupies its western half, and the Aravalli range runs diagonally across it, separating the desert from the more fertile southeast. The Aravallis are among the oldest fold mountains in the world and act as a barrier that has kept the desert from advancing towards the Gangetic plain. By population the order is quite different, with Uttar Pradesh far the largest, followed by Maharashtra, Bihar and West Bengal. The smallest state by area is Goa, and the smallest by population is Sikkim.

Answer: C

Correct answer: Gujarat

Gujarat has the longest coastline of any Indian state, roughly 1,600 km, owing to the deeply indented Gulf of Khambhat and Gulf of Kutch and the Saurashtra peninsula between them. That coast gives it a leading position in maritime trade, ports, fishing and salt production, and Kandla was India’s first special economic zone. Andhra Pradesh has the second longest, and Tamil Nadu the third. India’s total coastline, including the island territories, is about 7,500 km. Among union territories the Andaman and Nicobar Islands have a longer coastline than any mainland state, since a scattered archipelago has a great deal of shore for its area - a reminder that coastline length depends heavily on how finely the measurement follows the indentations. The nine coastal states are Gujarat, Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Odisha and West Bengal.

Answer: A

This is the baseline.

Under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, waters landward of the baseline are internal waters, and the territorial sea of 12 nautical miles, the contiguous zone of 24 and the exclusive economic zone of 200 are all measured seaward from it.

Answer: B

Mudumalai is in Tamil Nadu.

It lies in the Nilgiris on the Karnataka border and forms part of the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve, adjoining Bandipur and Wayanad. It became a tiger reserve in 2007, and its name means 'ancient hill'.

Answer: A

Black soil favours cotton.

Regur, formed from the weathering of Deccan lava, is clayey and retains moisture through long dry spells, which is exactly what a long-duration crop like cotton needs. It is rich in lime, magnesia and potash but poor in nitrogen.

Answer: D

The layers are troposphere, stratosphere, mesosphere, ionosphere and exosphere.

Temperature falls through the troposphere, rises through the stratosphere because ozone absorbs ultraviolet, falls again through the mesosphere, and rises steeply in the ionosphere or thermosphere. The lithosphere and pyrosphere are parts of the solid earth, not the atmosphere.

Answer: A

Jupiter is the largest planet.

Its diameter of about 143,000 km is eleven times the earth's, and its mass exceeds that of all the other planets put together. It is a gas giant of hydrogen and helium with no solid surface, and its Great Red Spot is a storm larger than the earth.

Answer: B

Because of its great size and extent among the peninsular rivers.

The Godavari is the longest river of peninsular India, some 1,465 km from Trimbakeshwar to the Bay of Bengal, and drains the largest basin. That scale earned it the name Vriddha Ganga, the old Ganga, or Dakshin Ganga, the Ganga of the south.

Answer: C

India has thirteen major ports.

They are Kandla (Deendayal), Mumbai, Jawaharlal Nehru, Mormugao, New Mangalore, Cochin, Kamarajar, Chennai, Tuticorin, Visakhapatnam, Paradip, Kolkata-Haldia and Port Blair. Major ports are administered by the Centre; the roughly 200 minor ports are with the states.