World & Physical Geography MCQs

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Eratosthenes, a Greek mathematician and geographer, is credited with being the first person to accurately measure the circumference of the Earth. He did this by comparing the angle of the sun’s rays in two different locations and using simple geometry to calculate the circumference of the Earth.

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The five layers of atmosphere are: Troposphere, Stratosphere, Mesosphere, Ionosphere and Exosphere

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Greenland is the world’s largest island. It located between the Arctic and Atlantic oceans, east of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. is known as Kalaallit Nunaat, meaning “Land of the people”.

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Lake Voctoria is the largest tropical lake in the world. It is one of the great African lake.

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Local winds are winds that blow in a limited area and are influenced by local geography. They can blow between small low and high pressure systems. Some examples of local winds include:

• Sea breezes: These winds alternate with land breezes during periods of strong daytime warming or nighttime coolness.
• Loo: These hot and dry winds blow during summers in the northern plains of India.
• Chinook winds: These warm and dry winds move towards the eastern slopes of rocky mountains.

Other types of local winds include:

• Anabatic and katabatic winds
• Foehn winds

Local winds can be dominated by wind patterns when broad-scale winds are weak.

Notes:
Plateaus are classified according to their surrounding environment.
1. Intermontane plateaus are the highest in the world, bordered by mountains. The Tibetan Plateau is one such plateau.
2. Piedmont plateaus are bordered on one side by mountains and on the other by a plain or sea.
3. Continental plateaus are bordered on all sides by the plains or seas, forming away from mountains.
4. Volcanic plateaus are produced by volcanic activity. The Columbia Plateau in the north-western United States of America is one such plateau.
5. Dissected plateaus are highly eroded plateaus cut by rivers and broken by deep narrow valleys.

Notes:
The Malpelo Plate is a small tectonic plate (a microplate) located off the coasts west of Ecuador and Colombia and south of Panama. The team of Researchers led by Rice geophysicist Richard Gordon named for an island and an underwater ridge it contains is the 57th plate to be discovered and the first in nearly a decade, they said. They are sure there are more to be found. Malpelo microplate is located west of the Galapagos Islands off the coast of Ecuador. It is wedged in-between the Nazca, Cocos, and Caribbean minor plate. It is linked to a nearby oceanic ridge along the Ring of Fire. Earlier it was that assumed most of the region east of the known Panama transform fault was a part of Nazca plate. But recent study showed that it is different tectonic plate moving independently in a different direction. Evidence for the Malpelo plate came with the researchers’ identification of a diffuse plate boundary that runs from the Panama Transform Fault eastward to where it intersects a deep oceanic trench just offshore of Ecuador and Colombia.

Notes:
Alluviul soil is loose, unconsolidated sediment that has been eroded, reshaped by water in some form, and redeposited in a non-marine setting. Alluviul soil is typically made up of a variety of materials, including fine particles of silt and clay and larger particles of sand and gravel.

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A black hole is a place in space where gravity pulls so much that even light cannot get out. The gravity is so strong because matter has been squeezed into a tiny space. This can happen when a star is dying. Black holes can be big or small.

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The correct order of soil erosion process is splash erosion, sheet erosion, rill erosion and gully erosion. Splash occurs when the raindrop hits the surface; explosive impact soil into individual particles. Sheet erosion is the detachment of soil particles by rain drop and their removal down slope by water flowing overland as a sheet in definite channels. Rill erosion refers to the development of small ephemeral concentrated flow paths which function as both sedimentary source and sediment delivery systems for erosion on hill slopes. Sheet erosion removes the this top layer by raindrop kill or orion occurs in lines which are less than 30 cm deep when these rills are deeper than 30 forming channels are called as gully erosion. Gully erosion occurs when water flows in narrow channels after heavy rain and melting snow.