UPSC STATIC QUIZ – Geography :12 February 2024

Solution: a)

Only Statement 2 is correct.

The black soils are generally clayey, deep and impermeable. They swell and become sticky when wet and shrink when dried. So, during the dry season, these soil develop wide cracks. Thus, there occurs a kind of self ploughing’.

Black soil is important for growing of crops like cotton and sugarcane. Laterite soil is more suited to grow plantation crop. 

Saline soils are also known as Usara soils. Saline soils contain a larger proportion of sodium, potassium and magnesium, and thus, they are infertile, and do not support any vegetative growth. They have more salts, largely because of dry climate and poor drainage. They occur in arid and semi-arid regions, and in waterlogged and swampy areas.

Solution: c)

The laterite soils develop in areas with high temperature and high rainfall. These are the result of intense leaching due to tropical rains. With rain, lime and silica are leached away, and soils rich in iron oxide and aluminum compound are left behind.

Red soil develops on crystalline igneous rocks in areas of low rainfall in the eastern and southern part of the Deccan Plateau. Along the piedmont zone of the Western Ghats, long stretch of area is occupied by red loamy soil. Yellow and red soils are also found in parts of Odisha and Chattisgarh and in the southern parts of the middle Ganga plain. The soil develops a reddish colour due to a wide diffusion of iron in crystalline and metamorphic rocks. It looks yellow when it occurs in a hydrated form.

The black soils are generally clayey, deep and impermeable. They swell and become sticky when wet and shrink when dried. So, during the dry season, these soil develop wide cracks. Thus, there occurs a kind of ‘self ploughing’. Because of this character of slow absorption and loss of moisture, the black soil retains the moisture for a very long time, which helps the crops, especially, the rain fed ones, to sustain even during the dry season.

Solution: b)

Statement 3 is incorrect.

In our country, debris avalanche and landslides occur very frequently in the Himalayas. There are many reasons for this. One, the Himalayas are tectonically active. They are mostly made up of sedimentary rocks and unconsolidated and semi-consolidated deposits. The slopes are very steep.

Compared to the Himalayas, the Nilgiris bordering Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Kerala and the Western Ghats along the west coast are relatively tectonically stable and are mostly made up of very hard rocks; but, still, debris avalanches and landslides occur though not as frequently as in the Himalayas, in these hills due to very heavy rainfall.

Solution: b)

Statement 3 is incorrect.

The Pacific ‘Ring of Fire’ or Pacific rim, or the Circum-Pacific Belt, is an area along the Pacific Ocean that is characterised by active volcanoes and frequent earthquakes. It is home to about 75 per cent of the world’s volcanoes – more than 450 volcanoes. Also, about 90 per cent of the world’s earthquakes occur here.

Its length is over 40,000 kilometres and traces from New Zealand clockwise in an almost circular arc covering Tonga, Kermadec Islands, Indonesia, moving up to the Philippines, Japan, and stretching eastward to the Aleutian Islands, then southward along the western coast of North America and South America.

Solution: c)

A huge natural gas crater, the Darvaza gas crater also known as the ‘Gateway to Hell’.

Located in the Karakum desert, 260 kilometres away from Turkmenistan’s capital, Ashgabat, the crater has been burning for the last 50 years.

Turkmenistan is one of the five Caspian Sea littoral countries, an area with large volumes of oil and natural gas reserves.