Geography

Warming and cooling of the Pacific Ocean is most important in terms of general atmospheric circulation. The warm water of the central Pacific Ocean slowly drifts towards the South American coast and replaces the cool Peruvian current. Such an appearance of warm water off the coast of Peru is known as El Nino. The El … Read more

Pygmy, in anthropology, member of any human group whose adult males grow to less than 59 inches (150 cm) in average height. A member of a slightly taller group is termed pygmoid.  The best-known Pygmy groups and those to whom the term is most commonly applied are the Pygmies of tropical Africa; elsewhere in Africa … Read more

El-nino is the classical phenomenon where warming of Pacific ocean takes place near the western coast of Peru and Equador. It occurs at every 3-4 years. It weakens the trade winds and changes in southern oscillation , thereby affects the rainfall pattern across the world. Southern oscillation: Southern oscillation is the alternating of sea level … Read more

Tertiary coal 15 to 60 million years old. Carbon content is very low.Mainly confined to the extra-Peninsula [Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Assam, Arunachal Pradesh etc.]Coal generally has low carbon and high percentage of moisture and Sulphur.It takes few hundred million years for the carbon content to improve.Important areas of Tertiary coal include parts of … Read more

Shield Volcanoes The second type may be familiar to you from news reports from Hawaii: the shield volcano. This type of volcano can be hundreds of miles across and 10,000 feet high. A shield volcano is characterized by gentle upper slopes (about 5 degrees) with somewhat steeper lower slopes (about 10 degrees). The shield volcanoes … Read more

As per Agriculture Census 2015-16, the average size of operational holding has declined to 1.08 hectare in 2015-16 as compared to 1.15 hectare in 2010-11. The small and marginal holdings (10 ha) are merely 0.57% of the total land holdings. Challenges faced by farmers due to fragmentation of land: Low productivity: Small and fragmented landholdings … Read more

A farming systems that are “capable of maintaining their productivity and usefulness to society indefinitely and must be resource-conserving, socially supportive, commercially competitive,and environmentally sound.” Major components of sustainable agricultural system Soil and water conservation to prevent degradation of soil productivity Efficient use of limited irrigation water without leading to problems of soil salinity,alkalinity and … Read more

Rainwater harvesting is the process to capture and store rainfall for its efficient utilization and conservation to control its runoff, evaporation and seepage. Some of the benefits of rainwater harvesting are: It increases water availability It checks the declining water table It is environmentally friendly It improves the quality of groundwater through dilution, mainly of … Read more

Ways: Diversification of export basket , instead of rice and sugar focus has to be on spices, cash crops. Improvement in agricultural productivity of cash crops to have competitive advantage. Most of the subsidies are cornered by rice, wheat, sugar which needs to be rationalised. Contract farming has to be encouraged. Infrastructure development, focus on … Read more

Dams and flood control The efficiency of dams to withhold floods has always been put to question. Critics have also termed dams as harbinger of floods claiming that the essential scientific assessment for consistent release of water to avoid build up is rarely done. Absence of a standard operating procedure for releasing water from the … Read more