World Geography Questions and Answers

Answer: A

Correct answer: Condensation

Condensation is the change from vapour to liquid, and it is what forms clouds. Rising air expands and cools; cooler air holds less water vapour, so once the parcel reaches saturation the surplus vapour condenses onto microscopic particles - dust, salt, smoke - called condensation nuclei. Without those nuclei the air would simply become supersaturated. The height at which this begins is the condensation level, which is why the flat bases of fair-weather cumulus clouds all sit at the same altitude on a given day. The other three are the neighbouring stages of the water cycle: evaporation turns liquid water to vapour, transpiration releases vapour from plant leaves, and infiltration is the soaking of water down into the soil.

Answer: B

Correct answer: Botswana

The Kalahari covers most of Botswana and extends into Namibia and South Africa, roughly 900,000 square kilometres of red sand across the interior plateau of southern Africa. It is a semi-desert rather than a true one: it receives more rain than the Sahara and carries grass and acacia scrub, so it supports substantial wildlife. Its distinguishing feature is that the sand absorbs the rain that falls, leaving almost no surface water. On its northern edge lies the Okavango Delta, where a river flows inland and evaporates rather than reaching the sea, creating a vast seasonal wetland in the middle of the dry country. The San people have lived in the Kalahari for millennia. Egypt and Morocco lie within the Sahara, and Nigeria is mostly tropical savanna and forest, with only its far north approaching the Sahel.

Answer: D

Olive, maple and walnut are trees of the mid-latitude or temperate forests, which are largely deciduous broadleaf.

Rosewood, mahogany and rubber belong to the equatorial rainforest; teak, sal and bamboo to the tropical monsoon forest; and pine, fir and spruce to the cold coniferous forest further north.

Answer: B

Correct answer: Africa

The Sahara stretches across northern Africa from the Atlantic to the Red Sea, covering an area comparable to that of the United States. Larger deserts exist in Antarctica and the Arctic, but those are cold deserts.

Answer: B

Marina Beach runs along the Bay of Bengal at Chennai in Tamil Nadu. At about 13 km it is one of the longest urban beaches in the world.

Its shore shelves steeply and the undertow is dangerous, so it is a promenade rather than a bathing beach.

Answer: A

Mount Everest, at 8,849 m, is the highest point on Earth, standing on the Nepal–Tibet border in the Greater Himalaya.

K2 in the Karakoram is second at 8,611 m, Kilimanjaro is Africa's highest at 5,895 m, and the Ellsworth Mountains hold Antarctica's highest peak.

Answer: C

Mauna Loa, on the island of Hawaii, is the world's largest active volcano. It rises 4,169 m above the sea and more than 9,000 m from its base on the ocean floor, and it makes up about half the island's area.

Its lava is very fluid, so it erupts as broad flows rather than explosively.

Answer: D

All three factors prevent forest growth in the polar regions. The growing season is only a few weeks long; the ground is frozen or under snow and ice for most of the year, so roots cannot penetrate or take up water; and precipitation is very low, since cold air holds almost no moisture.

Together they limit the vegetation to tundra mosses, lichens and dwarf shrubs.

Answer: D

Correct answer: Has exceptional species richness and is under serious threat

A biodiversity hotspot must satisfy two conditions: it holds at least 1,500 endemic vascular plant species - species found nowhere else - and it has lost at least 70 per cent of its original habitat. The second criterion is what makes the concept useful. Richness alone would simply identify the tropics; adding threat identifies where conservation spending will save the most species per rupee. The idea was introduced by Norman Myers in 1988, and about 36 hotspots are now recognised, together holding a large share of the world’s endemic species on a small fraction of its land. Four lie wholly or partly in India: the Western Ghats and Sri Lanka, the Eastern Himalaya as part of the Himalaya hotspot, Indo-Burma covering the northeast, and Sundaland including the Nicobar Islands. The word hotspot is used quite differently in geology, where it means a plume of rising mantle such as the one beneath Hawaii.

Answer: B

Of those listed, the Mediterranean is the largest sea, covering about 2.5 million km².

The Caribbean is about 2.75 million km² by some reckonings but is usually counted as a sea of the Atlantic proper; the Bering Sea covers about 2 million km² and the East China Sea only 1.25 million.