World Geography Mixed Practice — MCQs with Answers (Set 8)

The belt forms mainly along subduction zones, where oceanic plates sink beneath neighbouring plates. This process generates both the volcanic arcs and the deep trenches found along it.

The Mariana Trench, formed by subduction along the belt, holds Earth’s deepest known oceanic point.

The USGS attributes about 90% of the world’s earthquakes, and roughly 81% of its largest earthquakes, to this belt.

Mali’s government and international partners have tried dredging the Kondi channel to restore Niger River flow into Faguibine, with limited and uneven success.

Repeated Sahel droughts starting in the 1970s and 1980s, combined with silting of its feeder channel, cut off the lake’s water supply.

Faguibine was historically fed by a channel connecting it to the Niger River, once making it one of West Africa’s largest freshwater lakes.

Lake Faguibine, in Mali, has largely dried up. Its former lakebed is now mostly desert-like terrain.

The Serengeti-Maasai Mara ecosystem, spanning Tanzania and Kenya, is the world’s best-known savanna and hosts the annual wildebeest migration.

Fire, grazing herbivores, and seasonal rainfall (2, 3, and 4) are the standard credited factors. Burrowing animals/termites and soil properties are not.

The long dry season creates water stress that favours shallow-rooted grasses over trees, which need more sustained moisture.

Grazing herbivores trample and browse young saplings, preventing woody growth from establishing across open grassland.

Regular fire burns back tree seedlings before they mature, while established grasses survive fire far better.

The Mekong River Commission’s flood report of 2005 says the river runs about 4,800 km from its source to the South China Sea. It says the river enters the South China Sea through a complex delta system in Viet Nam. The Mekong does not reach the Andaman Sea, the Arabian Sea or the Bay of Bengal. The MGC’s own site calls the Ganga and the Mekong civilizational rivers, which is why this fact sits beside the MGC.

Volga–Caspian Sea and Zambezi–Indian Ocean are correct. The Mekong actually flows into the South China Sea, not the Andaman Sea; the Thames actually flows into the North Sea, not the Irish Sea.

Soviet-era irrigation projects diverted the Amu Darya and Syr Darya, the Aral Sea’s two main feeder rivers, to irrigate cotton fields in the desert, causing the sea to shrink by roughly 90%.

Only the Aral Sea has shrunk catastrophically, by about 90% since the 1960s, due to Soviet-era irrigation diversion of its feeder rivers. The Black Sea and Lake Baikal face pollution problems but haven’t physically shrunk this way.

Afghanistan’s short 76 km border with China lies at the far end of the narrow Wakhan Corridor, in the country’s northeast.

As per India, Afghanistan borders seven countries: Pakistan, Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, China, and India. India’s 106 km border runs through Gilgit-Baltistan, along the Wakhan Corridor. Most world maps show six, as Pakistan illegally occupies that area.

As per India, Afghanistan has seven neighbours: Pakistan, Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, China, and India. Among the five listed, only Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan border it — not Azerbaijan or Kyrgyzstan.

In its narrow sense, the Levant covers land bordering the Levantine Sea in West Asia — Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, and Palestine, sometimes also including Cyprus.

Jordan’s only sea access is the port of Aqaba, on the Gulf of Aqaba — an arm of the Red Sea, not the Mediterranean.

Syria has a real Mediterranean coastline. Jordan’s only sea access is the Gulf of Aqaba (Red Sea); Iraq’s only coast is on the Persian Gulf — neither touches the Mediterranean.

Only Lebanon and Syria have Mediterranean coastlines. Jordan is landlocked except for its small Red Sea outlet at Aqaba; Iraq’s only coast is on the Persian Gulf.