World Geography Questions and Answers

Answer: A

The mean distance of the Earth from the Sun is about 149.5 million km, which the options give as 149,502,000 km. This distance is the astronomical unit.

Because the orbit is slightly elliptical the actual distance varies from about 147.1 million km at perihelion in early January to about 152.1 million km at aphelion in early July.

Answer: D

All three factors reduce infiltration as a storm goes on. Water fills the fine pores, so the capillary suction that first drew it in disappears; wetted clay particles swell and squeeze the pores narrower; and raindrop impact breaks the surface clods apart, washing fine particles into the remaining openings and sealing the surface.

The rate therefore falls steeply at first and then levels off at the soil's saturated permeability.

Answer: A

Correct answer: Rises to the surface without pumping, under natural pressure

An artesian well taps a confined aquifer - a permeable layer sandwiched between impermeable ones - whose recharge area lies at higher ground. The water in it is therefore under pressure, and when the confining layer is pierced the water rises of its own accord, sometimes flowing freely at the surface. Three conditions are required: a permeable aquifer, impermeable layers above and below, and the recharge zone at a greater elevation than the wellhead. The level to which the water would rise if unimpeded is the piezometric surface, and a well only flows freely if its top lies below that surface. The name comes from Artois in France, where such wells were drilled in the twelfth century. The Great Artesian Basin of Australia is the largest example, underlying a fifth of the continent and making pastoral use of the arid interior possible. An ordinary well in an unconfined aquifer has no such pressure and must be pumped.

Answer: A

Correct answer: An erratic

A glacial erratic is a rock transported by ice and dropped far from its source, and it is recognised precisely because it does not match the bedrock it sits on. Erratics were among the first pieces of evidence for the ice ages: geologists in the nineteenth century could not explain granite boulders resting on limestone hundreds of kilometres from any granite, until glaciers were proposed as the carrier. Tracing an erratic back to its parent outcrop reveals the direction the ice flowed. The other three are also glacial landforms, but each is a shaped deposit rather than a single stray rock. A drumlin is a streamlined hill of till moulded beneath the ice; an esker is a long sinuous ridge of sand and gravel laid down by a stream flowing within or under the glacier; and a kame is a mound of debris dropped where meltwater ponded against the ice.

Answer: D

Correct answer: The uplift of land between two parallel faults

Block mountains, also called horsts, form where the crust is stretched and fractures, and a block between two parallel faults is either lifted or left standing while the ground on either side drops. The sunken counterpart is a graben, or rift valley. They are recognisable by their steep, straight fault-scarp sides and comparatively flat tops, quite unlike the crumpled strata of fold mountains. India’s Satpura and Vindhya ranges are of this type, with the Narmada flowing in the rift between them - which is why the Narmada runs west in a straight valley rather than meandering east like other peninsular rivers. Elsewhere the Sierra Nevada, the Vosges and Black Forest, and the East African Rift shoulders are examples. Fold mountains such as the Himalaya arise from compression at converging plates; volcanic mountains from erupted material; and residual mountains from the erosion of higher ground.

Answer: C

The Kuroshio is a warm current. It flows north-eastward along the east coast of Japan, carrying tropical water into the North Pacific, and is the Pacific counterpart of the Gulf Stream.

The Benguela current off south-west Africa, the Labrador current off eastern Canada and the South Pacific current all move cold water away from higher latitudes.

Answer: C

The divisions of geological time run eon → era → period → epoch → age, and in the rock record the corresponding smallest unit is the stage.

So of the options given, the stage is the finest subdivision and the eon the coarsest.

Answer: D

The Tertiary Period is divided into the Palaeocene, Eocene, Oligocene, Miocene and Pliocene epochs. The Palaeocene is the lowermost and therefore the oldest of these, beginning about 66 million years ago immediately after the extinction of the dinosaurs.

The Pliocene is the youngest Tertiary epoch, the Holocene lies in the Quaternary, and the Palaeozoic is an era far older than the whole Tertiary.

Answer: C

The Command Area Development programme has both aims. It works to close the gap between irrigation potential created and potential actually used by building field channels, land levelling and warabandi rotation, and through those same works to raise agricultural productivity in the command area.

Because both statements describe the programme, the combined choice is correct.

Answer: A

Cuba is known as the sugar bowl of the world. Its climate and soils suit sugar cane, and for most of the twentieth century sugar dominated its economy and exports.