Indian Geography Questions and Answers

Answer: A

All three statements are true.

Jhum is the shifting cultivation of the north-east, practised in Assam and the neighbouring hill states. The forest patch is cleared and burnt - hence 'slash and burn' - and the ash fertilises the soil. That fertility is exhausted in two or three years, so the plot is abandoned and another cleared.

Answer: A

Such a flat is a playa.

In a basin of inland drainage the streams have no outlet to the sea, so they end in a shallow depression where the water evaporates, leaving salts behind. The Sambhar salt lake in Rajasthan is an Indian example.

Answer: B

The National Forest Policy sets the target at 33.3 per cent.

The 1952 policy proposed a third of the total land area under forest - 60 per cent in the hills and 20 per cent in the plains - and the 1988 policy retained the figure. Actual forest cover is around 21 per cent.

Answer: C

Greenhouse gases trap thermal radiation.

Short-wave sunlight passes through the atmosphere almost unhindered and warms the ground. The ground re-radiates that energy as long-wave infrared, and carbon dioxide, methane and water vapour absorb it and re-emit it in all directions, including downward. The gases are transparent to the incoming radiation and opaque to the outgoing.

Answer: A

All three factors are at work.

The overseas market for jute goods shrank as buyers turned to cheaper substitutes; the supply of raw jute has been irregular since much of the growing area went to East Bengal in 1947; and synthetic packing material - polypropylene sacking above all - is lighter and cheaper, which has been the heaviest blow of the three.

Answer: A

It is in the Gulf of Mannar.

Declared in 1989, the Gulf of Mannar Biosphere Reserve off the Tamil Nadu coast was India's first marine biosphere reserve. Its 21 islands and coral reefs shelter the dugong, and it holds some 3,600 recorded species.

Answer: A

The Outer Himalayas lie between the lesser Himalayas and the Indo-Gangetic plain.

Also called the Siwaliks, they are the youngest and lowest of the three ranges, 900 to 1,100 m high, built of sediment eroded from the ranges behind. The flat valleys between them and the lesser Himalayas are the duns, of which Dehradun is one.

Answer: A

Mount St Helens is in the United States.

It lies in Washington state, in the Cascade Range, and erupted catastrophically on 18 May 1980, removing the top 400 m of the mountain and devastating some 600 sq km of forest.

Answer: B

The Reliance refinery is at Jamnagar in Gujarat.

Commissioned in 1999, the complex is now the largest refinery in the world by capacity at a single site, processing over a million barrels a day.

Answer: D

Nearly 70 per cent of India's population depends on agriculture.

The proportion of workers directly employed in it has since fallen towards half, but agriculture still supports a far larger share of the population than its share of national income - which is the central problem of rural incomes.