UPHESC Assistant Professor Geography 2025 PYQs

Concept: Sclerophyllous = ‘hard-leaved’: small, thick, waxy leaves that resist summer drought.

1. This is typical of Mediterranean climates (dry summer, wet winter): maquis, chaparral, garrigue, cork oak, olive.
2. Rain forests are broad-leaved; taiga is needle-leaved; tidal forests are mangroves.

Short trick: Dry summer → hard leaves → Mediterranean.

Concept: The oceanic Nazca plate subducts beneath the continental South American plate, raising the Andes with volcanoes and the Peru–Chile trench.

1. East African rift – continental divergence.
2. San Andreas – transform boundary.
3. Mid-Atlantic ridge – oceanic divergence.

Short trick: Ocean–continent convergence = Andes / Cascades.

Concept: Katabatic (Greek kata = down) winds are cold, dense air draining downslope under gravity, e.g. mountain winds at night, Antarctic/Greenland ice-sheet winds, bora.

1. Anabatic winds are upslope (valley breeze by day).

Short trick: Kata = down; Ana = up.

Concept: Derwent Whittlesey (1954, in ‘American Geography: Inventory and Prospect’) coined ‘compage’ for a region defined by the whole complex of physical, biotic and societal features that are functionally associated with man’s occupance.

1. Whittlesey also gave ‘sequent occupance’ (1929).
2. Herbertson – natural regions; Unstead – hierarchy of regions (stows, tracts).

Short trick: Whittlesey = compage + sequent occupance.

Concept: The Puranas describe seven dvipas around Jambudvipa; S. M. Ali (Geography of the Puranas) identified them with real regions.

1. Shalmali – tropical/East Africa along the western Indian Ocean, including Madagascar.
2. Kusha – Iran–Iraq; Plaksha – Greece/Mediterranean; Shaka – Malaya–Indochina (monsoon Asia); Pushkara – Japan–Manchuria.

Short trick: Shalmali (silk-cotton tree) → East Africa.

Concept: The mesosphere (≈50–80 km) is where most meteors burn up through friction with air molecules.

1. (A) true.
2. (R) false: the air there is very thin; greenhouse gases (water vapour, CO₂) are concentrated in the lower troposphere. The mesosphere is the coldest layer.

Short trick: Meteors burn – mesosphere; GHGs – troposphere.

Concept: J. T. Hack (1960) revived G. K. Gilbert’s idea as the theory of dynamic equilibrium.

1. (A) true.
2. (R) false: Hack precisely emphasised that landforms reach a time-independent steady state in which uplift is balanced by denudation, so form persists while material is removed.

Short trick: Hack = uplift ⇄ erosion balance (time-independent landforms).

Concept: The Aleutian arc is a volcanic island arc on the Pacific Ring of Fire.

1. The Pacific plate subducts beneath the North American plate along the Aleutian trench (a convergent boundary).
2. Melting of the subducting slab feeds the volcanoes – so (R) explains (A).

Short trick: Subduction → island arc volcanoes (Aleutians, Japan, Kurils).

Concept: Repetitive multi-date satellite imagery is the standard tool for land use/land cover change detection – (A) true.

1. (R) false: a key advantage of remote sensing is precisely its synoptic (bird’s-eye, large-area) view – one Landsat scene covers about 185 × 185 km.

Short trick: RS advantages: synoptic + repetitive + multispectral.

Concept: Grand Banks (Gulf Stream + Labrador), Japan (Kuroshio + Oyashio) etc. are the richest fishing grounds – (A) true.

1. At the meeting zone the mixed water has moderate, favourable temperature and the mixing brings up nutrients and oxygen, so plankton – the food of fish – multiplies.
2. The favourable temperature for breeding and growth of fish is the reason these zones are rich, so (R) explains (A) (plankton growth goes with it).

Short trick: Warm + cold meet → mild water + plankton → fish.

Concept: Both statements are true but unrelated as cause and effect.

1. (A) Odisha faces frequent Bay of Bengal cyclones (1999 super cyclone, Phailin, Fani) – due to its location on the cyclone track and warm Bay waters.
2. (R) Mangroves have prop and stilt roots that anchor them – true, and they reduce cyclone damage, but they do not cause the cyclone-proneness.

Short trick: R explains protection, not proneness.

Concept: Convergent boundaries are destructive margins.

1. The denser (heavier) plate sinks into the mantle along the inclined Wadati–Benioff zone of earthquakes and is consumed (melted).
2. This consumption is exactly the loss of crust – (R) explains (A).

Short trick: Divergent = crust created; convergent (Benioff zone) = crust destroyed.

Concept: In the systems view of the Davisian cycle, entropy (evenness of energy distribution) rises as relief and potential energy are used up.

1. In old age relief is reduced to a nearly flat peneplain – energy is evenly spread, so entropy is maximum (A true).
2. Peneplanation is the dominant process of old age (R true), and it is this levelling that produces maximum entropy, so R explains A.

Short trick: Youth = high relief, low entropy; old age = peneplain, maximum entropy.

Concept: Urban TFR is lower than rural TFR almost everywhere (India: urban TFR ≈ 1.6 vs rural ≈ 2.1).

1. Female education and paid work raise age at marriage, raise the opportunity cost of children and improve contraceptive use.
2. So the better access of women to education and jobs is the direct reason for lower fertility – (R) explains (A).

Short trick: Educated, working women → later marriage → fewer children.

Concept: Antarctica is a cold (polar) desert: its interior gets only about 5 cm water-equivalent a year, yet the snow never melts – (A) true.

1. Low precipitation is due to very cold air holding little moisture and the permanent polar high (descending air).
2. (R) strong katabatic winds do blow constantly – true – but they do not explain the low precipitation.

Short trick: Polar desert = cold + high pressure; winds are a separate fact.

Concept: Arrange by longitude.

1. Malacca ≈ 100° E (Malaysia–Sumatra) → Palk ≈ 79–80° E (India–Sri Lanka) → Hormuz ≈ 56° E (Iran–Oman) → Bab-el-Mandeb ≈ 43° E (Yemen–Djibouti).
2. Order: I, IV, III, II.

Short trick: From Singapore sail west: Malacca → Palk → Hormuz → Bab-el-Mandeb (Red Sea mouth).

Concept: Demarcating (delimiting) a region means drawing boundaries/assigning areas to centres.

1. Thiessen polygons divide space into areas nearest to each centre; graph theory uses flows/linkages (dominant flow) to group nodes into functional regions; discriminant analysis assigns areal units to regions statistically.
2. Nearest neighbour analysis only describes the pattern (clustered/random/uniform) of points – it does not draw region boundaries.

Short trick: Boundary-drawing tools = Thiessen, graph theory, discriminant; NNA = pattern only.

Concept: Across Jammu & Kashmir–Ladakh from south to north:

1. Pir Panjal (Lesser Himalaya) → Kashmir valley → Greater Himalaya → Zanskar range (Trans-Himalaya, just north of the Great Himalaya) → Indus valley → Ladakh range → Karakoram.
2. Order: I, III, II, IV.

Short trick: P-G-Z-L-K: Pir Panjal, Great Himalaya, Zanskar, Ladakh, Karakoram.

Concept: Vector data store points, lines and polygons; raster data store a grid of pixels.

1. MDB – ESRI personal geodatabase (feature classes); TAB – MapInfo table; DLG – USGS Digital Line Graph: all vector.
2. PNG – an image (raster) format.

Short trick: Pixels (PNG, JPG, TIFF) = raster; features (SHP, TAB, DLG, MDB) = vector.

Concept: Follow the west coast from Gujarat to Kerala.

1. Sabarmati (Gujarat, Gulf of Khambhat) → Tapi (Surat) → Kali Nadi (Karwar, Karnataka) → Bharathapuzha (Ponnani, Kerala).
2. Order: I, II, III, IV.

Short trick: Gujarat → Gujarat (south) → Karnataka → Kerala.