World Geography Questions and Answers

Answer: A

Both statements are the core of Von Thunen's agricultural location theory (1826), which explains land use as concentric rings around a market: transport cost rises with distance, so intensive and perishable production stays close in and extensive production moves out.

Answer: C

The Indus system has five major tributaries, and both listed groups belong to it: the Jhelum, Chenab and Ravi together with the Beas and Sutlej. Since each option names only part of the set, the combined choice is correct.

These five rivers give Punjab its name - panj (five) and ab (waters) - and all eventually join the Indus in Pakistan.

Answer: D

All three statements about the Moon are true. It is the Earth's only natural satellite; it has no liquid water on its surface, only traces of ice in permanently shadowed polar craters; and its gravity is too weak to retain an atmosphere, leaving it in near-vacuum.

Since each option is individually correct, the combined choice is the answer.

Answer: B

The Takla Makan lies in the Tarim Basin of Xinjiang, in western China. Covering about 337,000 km², it is one of the largest sandy deserts in the world.

It is ringed by the Kunlun, Pamir and Tian Shan ranges, which cut it off from every source of moisture, and the Silk Road skirted it on both sides rather than crossing it.

Answer: A

The chinook is a warm, dry wind that descends the eastern flank of the Rockies, warming as it is compressed and capable of raising temperatures sharply in hours. The sirocco blows off the Sahara, the harmattan across West Africa and the loo over northern India.

Answer: C

The Great Victoria Desert is the largest desert in Australia, covering some 350,000 sq km across Western Australia and South Australia.

Answer: A

The Ajanta caves are in the Aurangabad district of Maharashtra. Thirty rock-cut Buddhist caves were carved into a horseshoe cliff between the 2nd century BC and about 480 AD.

Their murals are the finest surviving examples of ancient Indian painting, and the site has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1983.

Answer: A

Correct answer: Hot and humid

Chemical weathering proceeds fastest in hot, humid conditions, because it depends on water and on chemical reactions, and reaction rates roughly double for every 10°C rise in temperature. Abundant rainfall supplies the water and carries the products away, exposing fresh surfaces. That is why tropical regions develop very deep weathering profiles - tens of metres in places - and soils such as laterite, in which prolonged leaching has removed the silica and left iron and aluminium oxides behind. Its main processes are hydrolysis, in which feldspar is converted to clay; oxidation, which rusts iron-bearing minerals; carbonation, in which slightly acidic rainwater dissolves limestone and produces caves and karst; and solution. Physical weathering has the opposite preference, dominating in cold and arid climates through frost shattering and the expansion and contraction of rock under large temperature swings. The two reinforce each other, since breaking rock apart exposes more surface for chemical attack.

Answer: C

Correct answer: Meridians

Lines of longitude are meridians. They run from pole to pole, all are the same length, and they converge at the poles rather than staying a fixed distance apart. Longitude is measured east and west from the Prime Meridian at Greenwich, up to 180° either way. Lines of latitude are parallels, and the name is exact: they never meet, they run east–west, and they shrink towards the poles. The practical difference between the two is historical as well as geometric. Latitude can be found from the height of the Sun or the pole star, and was measurable at sea for centuries; longitude requires knowing the time at a reference place, which is why it remained the great navigational problem until John Harrison’s marine chronometers of the eighteenth century. Isobars and contours are lines of equal pressure and equal elevation, unrelated to the coordinate grid.

Answer: C

Temperature inversion occurs whenever the normal decrease of temperature or moisture, or both, with height is reversed over a layer, so that the air above is warmer than the air below.

Because warm air then lies over cold, the layer is very stable and vertical mixing stops - which is why fog and pollution accumulate beneath an inversion.