UPHESC Assistant Professor Geography 2025 PYQs

Concept: The Zones and Strata theory (Environment, Race and Migration, 1937) explains the spread of human races in successive waves from a cradle land in Central Asia.

1. Griffith Taylor argued that the most primitive races were pushed farthest to the margins (zones) and lie at the bottom of the layers (strata).
2. Risley, Hutton and Eickstedt classified the races of India; they did not give this migration-zone model.

Short trick: Taylor = Zones & Strata (also ‘stop-and-go’ determinism).

Concept: Mass wasting (mass movement) is the downslope movement of rock and soil under the direct pull of gravity, without a transporting medium.

1. Water, ice or wind only help (lubricate, undercut); they are not the driving force.
2. Examples: soil creep, solifluction, landslides, rockfall, mudflow.

Short trick: Mass wasting = gravity alone moves the mass.

Concept: In Köppen’s scheme the A group (humid tropical) has only Af, Am and Aw (As).

1. Hot desert belongs to the dry B group: BWh (W = wüste, h = hot).
2. ‘An’ is not a Köppen type at all, so (D) is wrong.

Short trick: Desert = BW, steppe = BS; A group = f, m, w only.

Concept: Prof. R. P. Misra (Mysore) is the pioneer of regional and rural development planning in India (growth foci, micro-level planning).

1. Works: ‘Regional Planning’, ‘Rural Development: National Policies and Experiences’, growth-centre studies.
2. S. P. Chatterjee – regional/physiographic divisions and Bengal; G. S. Gosal – population geography.

Short trick: Misra = planning (Mysore school of regional development).

Concept: The quantitative revolution (1950s–60s) made geography a spatial science using statistics and models.

1. Peter Haggett (Locational Analysis in Human Geography, 1965; Models in Geography with Chorley, 1967) was a leading figure, with Schaefer, Bunge, Garrison, Berry.
2. Hartshorne – areal differentiation (target of the revolution); Mackinder – Heartland; Sauer – cultural landscape.

Short trick: Haggett & Chorley = ‘Models in Geography’.

Concept: E. W. Burgess (1925, Chicago) proposed the concentric zone model: CBD → zone in transition → workers’ homes → residential → commuters’ zone.

1. Homer Hoyt – sector model (1939).
2. Harris & Ullman – multiple nuclei model (1945).
3. Christaller – central place theory.

Short trick: Burgess = rings, Hoyt = sectors, Harris–Ullman = nuclei.

Concept: Nearest neighbour analysis (Clark & Evans) measures whether point features are clustered, random or uniform.

1. Index $R_n=2\overline{d}\sqrt{N/A}$: 0 = clustered, 1 = random, 2.15 = perfectly uniform.
2. Sampling, correlation and regression deal with data selection or relationships between variables, not spatial arrangement.

Short trick: Settlement pattern question → Nearest neighbour (Rn).

Concept: A line graph joins values plotted against time, so rises and falls (trend) are seen directly.

1. Pie chart – share of parts in a whole.
2. Ogive – cumulative frequency curve.
3. Star diagram – several variables around a point (e.g. wind rose).

Short trick: Time series → line graph.

Concept: In the orthographic projection the light source is at infinity, so the hemisphere looks exactly as the globe seen from deep space.

1. Gnomonic – light at the centre of the globe (great circles become straight lines).
2. Mercator and sinusoidal are cylindrical/pseudo-cylindrical world maps, not perspective views.

Short trick: Ortho = view from infinity (‘photo of the globe’).

Concept: Christaller’s central place theory (1933) explains the number, size, spacing and hierarchy of towns serving surrounding regions.

1. It is the base for planning a hierarchy of service/growth centres.
2. Sector theory is about the internal structure of one city; dependency theory is about core–periphery economics.

Short trick: Hierarchy of towns + hexagons = Christaller.

Concept: Mollweide is an equal-area elliptical projection; the ellipse’s semi-minor axis (half central meridian) is $\sqrt{2}R$ and semi-major axis (half equator) is $2\sqrt{2}R$.

1. Area of ellipse = $\pi \times 2\sqrt{2}R\times \sqrt{2}R=4\pi R^2$ = area of globe.
2. Equator = $2\times 2\sqrt{2}R=4\sqrt{2}R\approx 5.66R$; central meridian = $2\sqrt{2}R$.
3. $2\pi R$ is the true equator on the globe, not on Mollweide.

Short trick: Mollweide: meridian $2\sqrt{2}R$, equator twice that $4\sqrt{2}R$.

Concept: The Gulf Stream meanders strongly after leaving Cape Hatteras; the loops pinch off as eddies called rings.

1. Warm-core rings (clockwise) break off to the north into cold slope water.
2. Cold-core rings (anticlockwise) break off to the south into the warm Sargasso Sea.

Short trick: Meander → pinch off → Gulf Stream rings.

Concept: For the spatial-science (quantitative) school, a region is not a real object but a classificatory device – a convenient, efficient generalisation of how the character of an area varies.

1. This instrumental view of the region is the one associated with Peter Haggett and the locational-analysis approach, and it is the view expressed in the quoted line.
2. Hettner and Hartshorne saw regions as unique areas studied idiographically (chorology / areal differentiation), not as a shorthand device.

Short trick: Region as a ‘shorthand tool’ = modern spatial-analysis view (Haggett).

Concept: NAPCC (2008) has eight missions.

1. Solar; Enhanced Energy Efficiency; Sustainable Habitat; Water; Sustaining the Himalayan Ecosystem; Green India; Sustainable Agriculture; Strategic Knowledge for Climate Change.
2. There is no ‘Wildlife Protection’ mission.

Short trick: 8 missions: S-E-H-W-H-G-A-K (Solar, Efficiency, Habitat, Water, Himalaya, Green, Agriculture, Knowledge).

Concept: Variance = (standard deviation)${}^2$.

1. ${2.83}^2=8.0089\approx 8.00$.
2. 5.66 is $2\times 2.83$ (doubling, not squaring); 1.68 ≈ $\sqrt{2.83}$.

Short trick: SD = $\sqrt{\text{variance}}$; $2.83\approx 2\sqrt{2}$ so variance = 8.

Concept: NCERT (India: Physical Environment) notes that the Mizo hills of the Purvanchal are also known as the ‘Molasses basin’.

1. Molasse = soft, unconsolidated sandstone–shale deposits shed from a rising mountain belt.
2. The Mizo hills (Tertiary folds of the Purvanchal) are built of such loose sediments, hence the name.

Short trick: Mizoram = Molasses basin (M–M).

Concept: Shifting (slash-and-burn) cultivation has different local names.

1. Ladang – Malaysia/Indonesia.
2. Milpa – Mexico & Central America.
3. Tamrai – Thailand.
4. Taungya – Myanmar (also a forestry agro-system).

Short trick: Malaysia – Ladang; Mexico – Milpa; India NE – Jhum.

Concept: Weather charts need a conformal (orthomorphic) projection so that wind directions and the shapes of pressure systems are correct; for low latitudes Mercator is used.

1. India lies mostly in the tropics/sub-tropics, so IMD’s daily weather maps are drawn on Mercator’s projection.
2. Polyconic is used for Survey of India topographical sheets; Bonne and sinusoidal are equal-area, not conformal.

Short trick: Weather/navigation chart = conformal = Mercator.

Concept: Louis Agassiz (1837, ‘Études sur les glaciers’, 1840) proposed that a great Ice Age (Eiszeit) once covered much of Europe.

1. Evidence: erratic boulders, striations, moraines far from present glaciers.
2. Hutton – uniformitarianism; Playfair – popularised Hutton (law of accordant junctions); Lyell – Principles of Geology.

Short trick: Agassiz = father of glacial (Ice Age) theory.

Concept: A niche is the ‘profession’ of a species – its habitat needs plus its functional role in the ecosystem (what it eats, who eats it, its interactions).

1. Habitat = only the ‘address’ (place where it lives).
2. Ecotone = transition zone between two ecosystems.
3. Home range = area an animal normally moves over.

Short trick: Habitat = address; Niche = address + profession.